Kind of a poorly defined term Joel. Technically, the measure is
dot-time, the duration of one dot. It's also the duration of the spaces
between character elements. Dashes are 3 dot-times, as are the spaces
between letters. The space between words is 7 dot-times. I'm fairly
sure that's what W1AW sends for bulletins and code practice.
"Weight" on some keyers means changing the length of a dot in relation
to dash. I have an old keyer where it meant lengthening or shortening
the inter-element spaces above or below one dot-time. And some keyers
[Winkey?] allow you to adjust several of those parameters.
Since bugs are mechanical, a very close spacing on the dot contact will
make longer dots, a wide spacing will make them shorter. That's what
weight used to mean when everyone used a bug, but it was kind of
complicated by the fact that you make the dashes manually. It's always
seemed common to me for the dots from a bug to be a little too short.
73,
Fred K6DGW
- Northern California Contest Club
- CU in the 2014 Cal QSO Party 4-5 Oct 2014
- www.cqp.org
On 12/12/2013 2:48 PM, Joel Black wrote:
Okay, maybe this is a dumb question, but I have searched the Elecraft
Archives back to October 2011 and I cannot find what I'm looking for (or
I don't know what I'm looking for).
What is CW Weight? I know what the book says, "Adjust element/space
timing ratio (weight) for the internal keyer."
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