LIDS was born on the May bank holiday weekend, 2014. Inaugural founders Matt M0ZAI and Ian MW0IAN were procrastinating on Twitter instead of doing CW. After having decided that they should start a CW club, everything snowballed and here we are!

LIDS is a ‘virtual’ radio club collectively run by a community of amateur radio operators on Twitter. Not to be confused with ‘lids’ in the derogatory sense (although with a self-deprecating hat-tip in that direction) LIDS is all about encouraging amateur radio operators to try something new, especially if it is CW.

It doesn’t matter how long you have been licensed; trying something for the first time can be a bit daunting. You’re not sure what to do, how things work, or the procedures and etiquette to use. LIDS is all about having a go. Knowledge and experience will come, but if you don’t try – and make the inevitable mistakes – then you will miss out.

So what are the LIDS all about?

We love CW (Morse). We don’t care how old you are or how good you are or how many WPM you can copy at.

We would rather have a members QSO than sit there listening to a CW trainer. Get on the air and make some beeps.

We like to think that CW can be fun, and isn’t some badge of honour or elite club.

Saying that, we aren’t just limiting ourselves to CW! Any data mode is enjoyed by our members, be it PSK, RTTY, JT65, whatever!

LIDS members frequently use Twitter to schedule QRS CW contacts and we operate an irregular QRS net on 40m. The details of the net, QRG etc, are always available from our Twitter feed. The net runs at the speed of the slowest operator, and there is no such thing in our book as ‘too slow’, because we were all there once. Our motto is: “Leave no OP behind.”

Follow us on Twitter as @lids_cw.

If you have articles to post on the lidscw.org website or if you want to get more involved helping run LIDS CW and encourage newcomers to CW then drop us a line at admin@lidscw.org.

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