I watched a man fumble his way through operating CW, and it gave me permission to fail.

Jason’s (KC5HWB) video, “Can I Make a CW Contact? First Time Attempt,” is not a polished tutorial. It is a raw field recording of someone setting up gear on Galveston Island, calling CQ on 10 watts, and immediately running into the ordinary chaos of being a beginner. He mis-sends letters. He struggles to copy the stations that answer him. He laughs at himself when he mangles “POTA” and “CQ.”

Then, slowly, very slowly, his first contact lands. He carefully decodes KX9F in Illinois, and you can hear the genuine satisfaction in his voice when he finally logs it. Jason takes a breath, laughs about his mistakes and then keeps going. Painfully slowly he decodes his next contact, N8EYF in Florida. It took minutes and many resends for him to finally decode the callsign. At one point I was so invested in Jason decoding the “Y” in “N8EYF” that I was yelling encouragement at the screen. Jason finally logged his second contact in over 16 minutes of video with parts edited out!⁠

What struck me was not the radio technique (or lack thereof). It was the decision to publish the whole uneven ugly process. The comments underneath confirmed what the video already showed. We all recognized ourselves in that awkward first attempt. Viewers wrote that this is exactly how you become an operator, that everyone starts somewhere, that there is nothing to be ashamed of. Jason had put his learning in public, and the response was not mockery. It was recognition and encouragement.⁠

I have wanted to make YouTube videos for a long time. The barrier was never equipment or ideas. It was the certainty that the early ones would reveal, in public, that I do not know what the heck I am doing. I can clearly see the stumbles, the bad audio, the moments where I lose the thread of a sentence and have to start over, the visible evidence that I am still figuring out framing, pacing, and what on earth I am trying to say. The fear was not abstract. It was the concrete dread of looking like an idiot while the learning is still happening.

Jason’s video cut through that. He was not pretending to be competent at CW. He was demonstrating the actual first attempt, complete with the parts that went wrong. The fact that he still uploaded it, and that people responded with “keep posting these,” reframed the problem. The “idiot phase” is not a fault to be hidden away until I am ready. It is the necessary public record of getting better. Waiting until I no longer risk looking clumsy is the same as waiting until I no longer need to practice.

So I am giving myself the same permission he took. I am starting to make YouTube videos. I have kicked this idea around for far too long without making my leap. Type my callsign into YouTube and you will easily find my fledgling channel.

https://www.youtube.com/@Ken-AC0TG

My videos will be imperfect. Some of them will be awkward enough that future me will wince. That is the point. Putting the work out there is how the learning accelerates; the feedback, the small adjustments, and the simple act of finishing something all become available only after the file is uploaded. Jason did not wait until his Morse was clean. He went to the park, made the contacts he could, and shared the session. I can do the equivalent with a camera and a topic I care about.

I can not promise myself that the fear will disappear. I have just decided that my fear no longer gets veto power. I can feel unsure, sound uncertain, and still press publish. The alternative, keeping every early attempt private until it feels safe has already kept me from starting for longer than I want to admit. Watching someone else refuse that bargain made the cost of continued waiting painfully obvious.

If you have been feeling the same hesitation, the video is a useful reminder that the people who end up good at a skill almost always look ordinary, or worse, at the beginning. The ones who improve are the ones who let the ordinary beginning exist in the open. Jason’s first CW activation did not need to be elegant to be worth making. He gave himself permission is simply to start, to put the imperfect version out there, and to treat looking like a beginner as evidence that he is doing the work rather than evidence that he should stop.

So now here is my challenge to you. Be brave enough to suck at something new. Get out there. Push the PTT. Run for Mayor. Build the thing.

Whatever it is that you think is out of your reach, will be, until you take the first faltering steps.

73

Ken AC0TG

Fledgling Content Creator!