K5TR's NA Sprint practice audio files
Each mp3 track in the table below consists of 75 or 100 Sprint half-QSO's and plays for about ten minutes (SO2R about five minutes). You can listen to a track on your computer or download it to your portable mp3 player. You can download several and burn a standard audio CD to play in your portable player or automobile player (or your home player if you are not married). To download on a PC, right click the mp3, then chose "Save Target As" from the pop-up menu in Internet Explorer or "Save Link As" in Netscape. On a Mac, while clicking hold down the mouse button for a few seconds to bring up a pop-up menu that will allow you to save the file to your system. When expanded to WAV files, which most CD burning software does automatically, five or six tracks will fit onto a standard audio CD. Both types of Sprint half-QSO appear randomly:
CQ'er half-QSO: N6TR K4AAA 401 BILL TN
S&P'er half-QSO: K4AAA 408 TREE OR N6TR
How and when to use each half-QSO is explained in The Sprint Survival Web Page and CW Sprinting - Beginners Guide. In addition to randomly varying the half-QSO type and the speed within each specified range, the audio tone varies from 300 to 700 Hz and the amplitude from 0.5 to 0.9. The text for each track may be viewed or downloaded for comparison purposes as well. For convenience (or confusion), the text opens in a new window. The names and QTH's were actually copied during recent Sprint's. The QSO numbers were randomly generated. Occasionally a short noise glitch appears on the first character of a track (get over it). Each mp3 is 5 to 6 MB.
Here's another really convenient way to listen to these files. Many new automobile stereo CD players play both standard audio CD's and mp3 CDROMS. Also, portable mp3 CDROM players are quite inexpensive. The pictured model was purchased for $32 at Wal-Mart (click thumbnail to enlarge)! This is a basic unit yet works very well. For $60 you can buy several very nice brand name models. Download the files you want and burn a computer CDROM, not a music audio CD, with the mp3 files. If you download the zipped files, of course unpack them first. You may want to make one CDROM for each speed range, or you may want to place multiple speed ranges on the same CDROM. You can store all the mp3 files for all four speed ranges on a single mp3 CDROM! When you play the CDROM in a mp3 player, the filename will appear as the “song” title. The will be of the form “sprintXXpYY” where XX is the top end of the speed range and YY is the track number in that speed range from the table below.
Before the real Sprint, be sure to warm up with a little SO2R! For more information on how these NA Sprint practice audio tracks were made using 'dual', see the post by Chuck Adams, K7QO. If you have any questions, e-mail k5tr. Copy ke5c if you find an html error. Thanks and happy Sprint practice!
Track
25 to 33 wpm
(75 half-QSO's)
32 to 38 wpm
(75 half-QSO's)
34 to 42 wpm
(100 half-QSO's)
40 to 50 wpm
(100 half-QSO's)
zipped
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
 
 
 
 
16
 
 
 
 
17
 
 
 
 
18
 
 
 
 
19
 
 
 
 
SO2R
 
 
 mp3
  
 
last revised: February 15, 2004 by ke5c