Welcome To Morse Cudgel
by
Johannanonymous
Exercise
List
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THE CODE BUDDIES
PEP TALK
This is a Morse code training course which makes use of the well
known CW computer program - Just Learn Morse code (JLMC). It's a
series of exercises specially designed to assist those who do not
have the talent to be head-copiers and would like to get their pen
speed up to 20 to 30 words-per-minute. The final goal is to become
99.9% proficient at 20 wpm, which is the industry standard.
The exercise list and links are down below, but you may want to
continue reading, especially if you are a beginner because I am
going to offer some important realities of Morse code. And for that
purpose, let's switch the subject a moment to music.
Back in
high school, the three individuals in our music circle who impressed
me the most were Bob1, Bob2 and Doc.
At age 17, Bob1 came to
our high school in his junior year and in the first week dazzled the
entire auditorium with a flawless and powerful piano performance of
George Gershwin's, Rhapsody in Blue. A month later it was the Franz
Liszt, Fantasy and Fugue on B-A-C-H. Another powerful and flawless
performance. And these one-man (boy) performances continued right
through the end of his senior year. He was truly a brilliant young
artist and an asset to our school.
But what used to really
amaze me about Bob1 was the fact that if you were sitting at the
piano and Bob1 was sitting a good distance away (out of sight of the
keyboard) and you either rolled an eight-note chord or played the
whole chord all at once, regardless of how weird or dissonant you
tried to make the chord sound, Bob1 could name the exact notes you
played, in order, from bottom to top without ever making an
error. With the help of Doc, the rest of us musical diminutives soon
came to understand why this was so.
Bob1 possessed a natural
gift called absolute pitch (AP) or what is oftentimes referred to as
perfect pitch. This augmentation to his very genetic code, allowed
Bob1 to accurately hear music in all of its tonal parts, memorize
complex music with great ease, and hammer it out on a keyboard with
virtuosity; the ability to perform, minus the sin of error, aka,
striking the wrong key at the right time. No small gift from nature,
it is estimated that about one in ten thousand human beings are born with
AP.
Then there was Bob2. Bob2 did not possess absolute
pitch, but he did have very good relative pitch. Bob2 had
the ability to play by ear any simple popular song on the piano,
regardless of whether he had practiced it in the past, and make it sound
good - surprisingly good! If you just named the tune, as long as he
knew it well enough in his mind, he could make it happen on the
keyboard. He was limited to his one style of playing - I believe it
was called the swing-base method - but it always sounded good.
Relative pitch is something that is both innate and acquired.
It comes in many degrees. With the exception of the tone-deaf, we
all have some degree of relative pitch. If this were not so,
few of us would be able to sing Mary Had A Little Lamb, without
making it sound like recitative(rap). What Bob2 possessed was
good relative
pitch. Like Bob1, Bob2 was able to hear music in all of its tonal
parts, but he lacked the memorization skills and he had less of the
virtuosity that comes with AP. This became obvious for the fact that
he spent his entire senior year trying to put together Modest
Mussorgsky's, Pictures At An Exhibition, which he played reasonably
well in the spring musical, despite skipping over the most difficult
movement. Although an impressive classical composition, it is
certainly nothing that would have taken Bob1 more than a week or two
to bring up to concert performance speed.
Then there was Doc. At age 53, our music teacher was at the top of his game. He was
never a Bob1, not even close, and he was not at all ashamed to admit
it. He could play absolutely NOTHING by ear, and he was not at all
ashamed to admit that. However, Doc was a totally outstanding
sight-reader. Put any reasonably difficult classical music in front
of Doc's face (a Bach Partita or a Chopin Nocturne) and he could
make it sound great on the first try. Of course, a Liszt Hungarian
Rhapsody would have been asking too much.
But as far as
playing popular music by ear, I can still hear Doc's voice - "Get me
the music, boy. Go fetch me the music and I'll play it for you. I
know the song, but I don't play by ear."
Sight-reading is
pretty much an acquired skill. Some people have an easier time of it
than others, but it is not at all like AP or good relative pitch
which are essentially gifts from nature. I once asked Bob1 to
sight-read the same Bach, French Suite that I had Doc play the day
before, and although Bob1 was certainly a more gifted musician, his
sight-reading was kind of a letdown. His tempo was slow and
expressionless and he made frequent errors. Nothing unexpected
though; young pianists with AP are known to neglect sight-reading
practice in favor of memorization. Of course, Bob2 couldn't
sight-read worth a damn, so I knew better than to ask him to give it
a try. The main reason that Doc was an outstanding sight-reader was
the fact that he was 53 years old, probably having spent the better
part of 50 years, sight-reading.
OK, so the music lecture is
over and you're probably wondering what this all has to do with
Morse code. Well, I'm going to make some analogies here.
Have
you ever heard of guys that can comprehend Morse code at 100+ words
a minute? Yes, they are rare, but they are truly out there. It's
hard to imagine how they get to show off their skills on the air. If
you've ever heard a computer spitting out Morse at that speed, you
know that these guys are not hearing the individual characters one
at a time. What they are hearing is an entire word all at once, sort
of like a high-speed mini drum roll which makes a word. These are
the Bob1s of the CW world. In other words, they possess CW-AP.
How about the guys that can sit back in their ham shacks and
carry on a ragchew at 20 to 30 words per minute without writing
down a single word? Well, these are the Bob2s of the CW world. Just
like the CW-APs, they have a special gift which for lack of a better
term, I will call "word-talent." The analogy is to say that they
have good CW relative pitch.
The rest of us are Docs. Lacking
sufficient word-talent, we are limited to the skill of "CW
sight-reading" or more accurately, CW sound-writing, aka, copying
with pen and paper. So now, what is word-talent? In
brainiac terms, it's really all about short term memory. But
then, what's that got to do with Morse code?
Well, have
you ever heard parents spell out words at the dinner table to keep
their young children in the dark? When they go too fast, they will
often puzzle the grand-parents as well. We can define
word-talent as the ability to visualize and retain, solely in one's
mind, words and sentences that are spelled out one letter at a time
and ultimately make sense of it all.
If you do a minimum of reading about Morse
code on the web, sooner or later you will run into this phenomenon
called - the 10 to 15 word-per-minute (wpm) barrier. The amazing
part of this subject is that no one ever talks about how to overcome
this barrier or whether or not it can be overcome. I can tell you
though, that it is real.
However, what no one else will ever
bother to mention is the fact that this barrier does not apply
to pen-paper copiers, especially those who use what's called the
Farnsworth Method of learning Morse. It only applies to
people who are trying to learn to copy Morse in their heads, and
this is for the fact that most people have a word-talent of
about 10 or 15 wpm. In other words, forgetting for a
moment about Morse code, if the proverbial parents at the dinner
table were to start spelling their words at 15 wpm, most adults
would be struggling to comprehend for lack of word-talent.
The only barrier that does exist for the pen copiers is their
writing speed, which for most people tops out at around 25 wpm.
Now, before we go any further with what many will see
here as a defeatist attitude, let me just say that if you are just
starting out in CW, you may very well have what it takes to be a
really good head-copier. Don't short yourself!
There's nothing wrong with giving head-copying a serious try right
from the beginning if you believe your word-talent is better than
most others'. It's easy enough to find out.
Simply
pick up any simple written material like a local newspaper article,
and using the sound recorder program on your computer or cell phone,
start reading one letter at a time as rapidly as you can while
pausing shortly between each word. Do this for about three minutes
and determine the number of words you have read in the first minute. You want to try and do this at 25 wpm or faster. Then play back the
recording and allow the words to form in your head. If you can
comprehend each word in your head as it is spelled out, that's a
good indication.
But now, that's the easy part. The hard part
of word-talent and head-copying is retaining these words long enough
in their proper order to allow them to form a meaningful sentence.
This is where most people fall short. And this is why
sometimes when people
are reading something like a newspaper, they find themselves having to read a sentence twice.
Quite often, even if each
word is read correctly, a sentence may not make sense in the first
reading.
If you don't seem to have much trouble in dealing
with whole sentences, then you should definitely drop the pen and
paper and use the exercises in this website to enhance your head-copying skills. You are very likely a Bob2 or better.
And as a closing point on this subject, you should definitely give
morsedx.com a try.
Otherwise, after trying this test at various speeds, if you decide
that your word-talent is somewhat limited, this naturally leads to
the question - can word-talent be developed? Well, certainly. Just
like musical sight-reading, which took Doc fifty years of sweat,
it's an acquired skill. But what do you want to do at this
point? Do you want to
learn Morse code, or do you want to win a spelling bee?
Let's
get to work.
JLMC
If you have never used Just Learn
Morse Code, it's a very clean download. There is no junk attached to
it. Any search engine will get you there with the four words.
Once you've got it downloaded and you're on the home page, go to
View on the top menu bar and make sure that Output, Codes, Toolbar
and Status Bar are all checked. Then go to Tools, Options and click
the General Tab and in the Session window set the duration for 5
minutes with a 4 second initial and end delay. Then click the
Character Set Tab and check all of the characters on the left side. On the right side check Plus Sign + and Equal Sign =. Leave
everything else unchecked and hit Apply and OK. Go into Source on
the top menu bar and check the first option - Character Set.
Below the top menu bar, the first three buttons of the action
toolbar are Play, Pause and Stop. A bit over to the right, you will
notice that you can control the number of characters being used in
each session; anything from 2 to the 51 characters that you
previously chose. As you increase the number of characters, JLMC
decides the order in which these characters are chosen and learned.
As you click up the number of characters you will see them highlight
out of grey on the far right panel.
Further to the right
along the action toolbar is a control for the two types of Morse
speeds. One controls the number of average words (more or less)
being put out every minute. The other controls the character speed,
or the speed in which the dits and dahs are sounded for each
character. I will tell you this. The number on the left seems to
control how fast any group of similar words is being sounded in a
minute and the number on the right seems to control the speed at
which the individual characters are sounded. If you set the left
number to 20 and have the program send the word "Paris" 20 times, it
will Morse this same word 20 times in one minute regardless of the
speed you have set in the right window. I'm going to refer to these
speeds as the left, or wpm speed and the right, or character speed. Let's just leave it at that.
Set both speeds to 10. Also
click the Characters window up to 10, to make 10 characters
highlight out of grey on the far right panel. Hit the go button. As
the Morse begins to play, listen for a while and take notice of the
spacing between each letter as it appears on your monitor. Now, bump
the right character speed window up to 20 on the fly, and take note
of the time interval between characters. Then bump it up to 30 and
once again, ignoring the speed in which each character is being
sent, focus on the time gap between each character. Obviously, as
the right, character speed is increased, the time gap between each
character gets longer so that the rate at which the average word is
being sent, remains at 10 per minute.
Now, if you are a
beginner, to save me some typing, kindly do a search for "Farnsworth
Method" and read up on the significance of all of this. That's your
first homework assignment. The Farnsworth method of learning Morse
code is based on the idea that if you want to increase your
word-per-minute (overall) speed, you need to push your character
speed to the absolute limit. In other words, you have to start
hearing Morse characters with your subliminal mind rather than
your conscious mind so that they come back into your conscious mind
as whole characters rather than dots and dashes.
With enough
reading on this subject, you will come across the claim that what
holds people back in CW is the fact that they are continuing to
count dits and dahs as they get above 10 wpm and that this counting
effort eventually reaches its cognitive limit. Don't ever
believe that! Below 30 wpm, your brain always, ALWAYS hears
and counts the dits and dahs of Morse code. If it did
not, you would not be able to tell the difference between x, y and
z. The only difference is that above 10 to 15 wpm your
reflexive mind starts to take over.
But, it's still
counting. If you did not use the Farnsworth Method and
kept the two speed numbers the same, you would eventually get
above 20 wpm, but it would take much longer to do so.
Let's look at this idea another way.
One of
the things that often takes people aback in the learning of
Morse code is the situation whereby they tend to forget Morse
code characters the better they get at copying them. Does
that make sense? Here’s how it often works.
Sometime after I had gotten up to a speed of about 10 wpm,
someone once challenged me when I told them that I knew Morse
code, by asking me what dah-dah-dit-dah means. When I
struggled to answer, he then asked me what dit-dit-dit-dah
means. Again, I was hesitant before I could actually fight
to remember that it’s the letter V. If this ever happens to
you, don’t let it rattle you. It’s actually a good thing.
Fortunately for my ego, we were sitting in front of my
computer so that I was able to start up JLMC and give him a demo
of my copying abilities. But at the time, we were both
puzzled as to why I was less than 3 wpm capable at naming the
Morse code characters when stated as dits and dahs. It
eventually came to me, and this is when I first realized that I
was starting to understand Morse code with a differnt part of my
brain.
As your Morse speed increases you will eventually
lose the conscious dit/dah spoken/counting concept of character
recognition and start hearing Morse characters almost in the
same manner as you hear and understand common spoken words that
you may not be able to spell. Most adults know what it
means to rendezvous at a certain place, but many would get lost
trying to spell the word itself. So, what’s the moral of
the story here?
If you don’t occasionally take the time
to review and practice the dits and dahs of spoken Morse code
characters, you may eventually forget them and run into the same
problem.
But is it, in fact, a problem? Actually,
no. Who cares how to spell rendezvous as long as you know
what it means when you hear the word. Let the French or
your spell-checker worry about the rest.
Getting Started With The
Basics
With the Character Set method of JLMC, you start the program
with just the first two characters, K and M. A good starting speed is
5/8; 5 in the left window and 8 in the right. When you hear a K, you
type a K and when you hear an M you type an M. You will also
notice that there is a certain amount of space between each
character and then there are places where the space is twice as
long. This twice-long space represents a word space and when you hear one you
must hit the space bar on your keyboard to get credit for hearing
it. If you do this for
the duration of the session, JLMC will score your typing. When you
score a 90%, add another character and keep on adding a character
each time you score a 90% while keeping the speed set at 5/8.
The most common error which diminishes your overall score is
forgetting to hit your space bar at a word space.
Now, I cannot speak as to the wisdom of JLMC's sequential choice
in adding characters in the Character Set mode, although it does
seem reasonable. However, I will say this with regard to getting
yourself beyond 8 to 10 words-per-minute.
First of all, going
from easy characters to harder ones like numbers and punctuation,
with equal attention to all characters, is no way to learn Morse
code. It's OK in the beginning, just to get established
somewhere, and becoming somewhat familiar with everything. But
in order to gain any proficiency and confidence at higher speeds you
are going to have to double and triple down on the hard stuff (like
numbers and punctuation) as
soon as possible. The reason is that you do not want certain
characters creating stumbling points in your copying. When you
fail to recognize a character, it's not just a situation where you
fail to copy just that one character. More often than not, the
natural impulse is to strain to recognize the tough character,
during which time you become distracted and fail to copy the
next two characters. Letting go of an unrecognized character
in time to catch the next one is a discipline all in itself.
As a matter of fact, I have a separate exercise just for honing this skill.
Also, as you start adding more and more alphabet letters, you will
begin to notice which of the 26 letters tend to give you the most trouble.
When you have identified 4 or more of these bugbears, this is the
time to start your own troublesome alphabet list and practice them
separately by going to Source, Selected Characters and typing in the
characters you need to focus on. Hit OK, and then hit the play
button and JLMC will start a random pattern of these characters
which will include occasional spaces. These
troublesome letters are something you
will also want to double and triple down on so that they don't hound
you all the way up to 20 wpm and beyond. The important
point here is that you must overcome the need for the false
gratification that comes with getting really good with the alphabet first.
Beleive me when I say, it's a trap!
You
must learn all of Morse code
evenly by doubling down as soon
as possible, or your copying will
become inconsistent and plagued with speed bumps.
Finally, the faster
you wean yourself off the keyboard, the better. If you are a
competent, trained QWERTY typist and you intend to stay glued to
your keyboard and monitor, that's one thing. The fact is, if you can
learn to type Morse at 25 to 30 wpm, you have a huge advantage over
both pen-copiers and head-copiers which I will explain at the end of
this writing. But, if you are a typical hunt-'n'-peck, a keyboard will
simply create another 10-15 wpm barrier just like head-copying. A cheap gel pen
or a Bic Fluid Writing pen is
the fastest thing to write with, and the smaller
you write, the faster you can go.
Moving To The Good Stuff
Once you have had enough of the
JLMC initial practice sessions and you have learned Morse code at
5/8, it's time to break away from this introductory routine and
start copying in a more realistic environment.
The CW
exercises below were developed from a 4000-word list of the most
frequently used English (American) words in both speech and writing. Although
none of the exercises make use of all 4000 words, each exercise is
composed from the top of the list on down, so that the most
frequently used words in the sequence are always included. The idea
is that learning Morse code is a lot like learning a language and it
makes sense to learn the most commonly used words first. Naturally,
whatever words that are used are presented randomly so that larger
words are mixed in with smaller ones as would be encountered in
speech and writing.
It is highly
recommended, and in some cases essential, that you copy and paste
each exercise into a separate word document, using your preferred
word processor, so that you can manipulate the exercise when
necessary. For example, a few exercises are specifically designed to
help you with troublesome characters. They are presently set up with
the characters that give me the most trouble. Therefore,
a few of these exercises will need to be
modified with your own personal list of characters, and I will walk
you through that. More importantly, if you paste the text
directly from this website into JLMC you may find that certain
punctuation like ' and " will not be recognized by JLMC.
Pasting the text into a word processor first will make them
readable to JLMC.
Although the exercises are numbered, there
is no real sequence in terms of which ones should be practiced
first. The best approach is to first discover your weaknesses in
copying and use the exercises that most appropriately serve to
strengthen your copying skills. The exercises included in CW Primer
are probably a good place to start.
OK, so here is how
these exercises work. It's pretty simple. Just pick
any exercise and drag and copy with your mouse, an entire Part
or section of a Part. Then go to Source in the main JLMC
menu bar, click Entered text and hit the Play button. When the Morse code source window
appears, right-click inside the window and hit Paste. Once
you've got your stuff pasted in, hit OK and the action will
automatically start after a 4-second delay (remember the initial
delay in Tools, Options and Session?). When you need a
breather, hit the double-barred Pause button. This will
allow you to continue where you left off. If you hit the
square Stop button, you will have to reload your entered text and
start over.
Another thing you should
know about these exercises is that you will not be practicing all of
them at the same speeds. Some of them are quite a bit harder than
others. You will have to determine what speeds you should best
practice them, and notice that "speeds" is plural as in wpm (left)
vs. character (right). In some cases you may have two different
exercises with the same wpm speed, but with different character
speeds.
One thing that you will have to do without, now that you
are applying pen to paper, is the nice grading feature
that JLMC offers when you interact with your keyboard.
However, you will soon discover that after having learned the
basics of Morse code, this is of little loss. At that
point, you will know each time you make an error, and most of
these errors will involve a missed character rather than a
misconstrued character. Moving forward is more about
gaining speed rather than accuracy simply because as you get
above 10 wpm your accuracy will automatically increase whenever
you back off on the wpm speed while leaving the character speed
the same. That's the nice thing about Farnsworth timing. Let's look
at that another way.
Let's say you reach the point where you
are practicing a certain exercise at 20/25, and simply for the
sake of argument, your accuracy is about 65%. If you were
to drop this speed to 17/25, your accuracy might increase to
80%. At 15/25, perhaps you would be at 90%, and at 10/25,
maybe you would be at or close to 100%. Once again, I'm
just throwing numbers out there so that you can get an idea of what to expect from Farnsworth timing. For
now, don't worry about accuracy! Accuracy is always a divisor of top
practice speed.
Worrying About Accuracy
I like to eat
my words when they're fresh.
So far, this entire writing as
been about copying Morse code, with nothing said about sending. Sending is a different
reality for the fact that you are always in
control of the speed, and therefore as a trade-off, you are expected
to be accurate.
In the beginning, there is a false notion
among all CW novices that sending is easier than copying.
This might
actually be true if every time you sent something in Morse code, you
could first write your words down on paper and then simply read and
send them one character at a time as in the heydays of Western
Union. Well, this is no way to make ragchew buddies on 40-meters.
You may not be planning to be a head-copier, but you'd better think
in terms of being a head-sender, and for this reason, sooner or
later you will discover that sending is quite a bit more difficult
than copying.
It doesn't stand to reason simply for the fact
that copying always involves not knowing what's coming next, while
sending always includes the luxury of knowing what you're sending
before you send it. At speeds below 10 wpm, this helps give the
impression that sending is easier than copying. But as you gain
speed in copying, you will notice two things.
First,
pen-paper copying starts to become an almost mindless action in which
the sound comes into your ear, bypasses your brain and goes directly
down your arm to your hand, causing it to spasm an alpha/numeric
character onto the paper. In other words, after a certain speed,
copying becomes so reflexive that not knowing what's coming next is
no longer an issue. The other thing you will notice is that it takes
much, much longer for this reflexive attribute to manifest itself into virtuous
sending. In the meanwhile, above 10 wpm, you will need to use all
three of your brains at once when sending.
Your first brain
will compose what you would like to say in spoken words. Your second
brain will visualize the words spelled out and then translate them into Morse code. Your third brain
will stand guard to focus hard on preventing your troublesome
characters from causing errors. The problem is that all three brains
are using the same power source. So, if you suddenly decide in the
middle of a transmission that you need to rephrase something,
however slightly, your first brain will cause a power drain which
will slow down the code translator of your second brain and probably
take your third brain completely offline, leaving you vulnerable to
your favorite bugbears.
It ain't easier.
The Virtuous Sender
If you are a
very chatty sort of person who never quite stops thinking of
interesting things to say, especially to yourself, then you are in a
better position than most people learning to send Morse code. Thinking
out loud and paddling your thoughts at the same time is
pretty much the most difficult process of sending in CW. As
previously stated, this is the type of sending that requires all
three of your brains to work together at the same time.
If
you are just getting started, it's OK to begin your sending efforts
by read-sending. That is, by looking at a word and paddling the
characters one at a time as you see them. But you must move away
from this practice as soon as possible because you will soon
discover that the most distracting part of a ragchew is the
creative demands of your first brain.
The best example of
this is why it can sometimes be dangerous to talk on the phone while
you're driving. If you are having a mundane conversation with
someone, it's no big deal. But if you become engrossed in the
conversation, this is what makes it risky.
I remember one
time a woman called me while I was on a country road anticipating a
right turn. She needed me to describe a step by step manufacturing
process which required that I create complex pictures in my mind so
that I could visualize the procedure and explain it without omitting
a step. By the time I got finished with this woman, not only was I
almost 4 miles beyond my right turn, but on the way back, I
recognized nothing. Although I was looking out the windshield, I was
not seeing anything beyond the mental pictures of what I was
describing. This is sometimes referred to as tunnel vision.
In a ragchew, once you have decided on what words
you want to say, the next thing you will need to do is to
visualize each word in your mind spelled out. When you spot a
character that you often have trouble sending, you are going to want
to focus on it and get it right when it comes around on the paddle. All of this may
sound unnecessarily complex, but with time, you will start to do it
subconsciously. In other words, it will eventually
become second nature.
What you should strive for when
practicing sending is getting each individual word out in one
complete, smooth, accurately character-spaced send. Don't
worry about extra space between words. If you need a
moment to think, take this moment between words, not between
characters of a word. Each word should be a strong
exertion of focus as though you are leaping from one rock to the
next to cross a river. As soon as you make an obvious mistake,
develop the habit of tapping
out a series of five of the letter E - (dit-dit-dit-dit-dit).
This is how you say "pardon me" in Morse. Then start the
word over again, but this time send the word three times in a
row, and keep on repeating the word until you have sent it three
times in a row without error. Then, move on. In
addition to specific troublesome characters, what
you will discover is that sending errors are also caused by a
certain combination of characters in a sequence that you may find particularly
difficult. Repeating the word as many times as necessary
to send it three times without error will help you get over
this problem. To further this idea, when you identify
words that noticeably give you trouble - start a
practice list!
It is safe
to say that your goal in copy practice is to push yourself to
higher and higher copy speeds. However, sending is a bit
more limited with regard to speed. In this case, it is
best to target your speed to a range that will be most
practical for communicating on the air, with your top sending
speed being close to your top (99% accurate) copy speed.
Therefore, it is also safe to say that the ultimate purpose of
sending practice should be geared more towards perfection.
In other words, you should be able to notice that as you
practice more and more at a specific sending speed, you make
fewer and fewer errors, until you can send long sentences
without making a single error. Unlike copying, it's all
about focus.
Never, never practice sending with a
character speed of less than 20 wpm. This is the speed at
which you should set your keyer from day one. There are
several reasons for this. First, there is no need to start
out any slower. You will most likely require some time to
learn sending characters at this keyer speed, but your ability
will come fast. Second, you yourself will want to get
accustomed to hearing Morse at this character speed or greater,
regardless of what word speed you choose to send at.
Finally, if you do decide to get on the air at 5 wpm, which is
perfectly fine, most hams are not going to want to hear
characters at a slower speed. Why not? There are
several reasons, but most of all, it's painful. Let's just
leave it at that.
Now, if you are not the kind of person
who can dream up interesting things to Morse to yourself, the next
best thing is to simply pick a good book and use it for sending
practice. But not by read-sending. What you should do is read a
sentence or part of one, read it again, and then without looking,
send the sentence in Morse code. It is best to choose a
technical book because it is more likely to have numbers mixed
in with the text than a dirty novel. And by
the way, the single most important thing you can do when practicing
sending is to record all of your sessions on your computer for copy
practice later. Most operating systems have a standard recording
program. In Windows, simply go to Programs, Accessories and look for
Sound Recorder.
It is very important to record your sending
sessions and allow these recordings to sit and ferment for a week
so that you can forget the words. Then come back to them
and see if they're drinkable. The good thing about copying your
own Morse code is that it's not at all like reading your own
handwriting. After coming back to them in a few weeks, if
you cannot copy your own sends, you can have full faith in the
fact that no one else on the planet will understand them.
Either way, you will get a firsthand confirmation if your
sending is bad and a clue of what is required to improve it. In the meanwhile,
until your fist sounds just like JLMC, you should try recording
your sending with a large gap between each word. You will
be surprised to see how this makes copying yourself quite a bit
easier.
One of the things that most folks have
trouble with is when ditty characters get too close together
like - "THIS." Dah, dit-dit-dit-dit, dit-dit, dit-dit-dit,
spells THIS. A good thumb exercise to help you get good at
these ditty characters is the E-I-S-H-5-H-S-I-E exercise.
Simply go up and down with these characters,
without repeating the E at
the bottom or the 5 at the top, until you have had enough for
one session. Even at a slow speed, you will see how much
"micro-focus" is required to get it right several times in a row. What's
micro-focus? You will understand this when you try to
analyse the errors you make in this exercise and why you made
them.
Whenever you stumble in the E-I-S-H-5-H-S-I-E
exercise, if you think about how you made each error, you
will discover that as you completed the character before the
stumble, you failed to momentarily focus on the very next
character, even so much as to what that character should
be. This micro-focusing effort is of a split-second nature
which will eventually become subliminal as you get better and
faster at sending. The point, of course, is that
this is the main cause of all sending errors. In essence,
your fist gets ahead of your brain, and nothing demonstrates
this more than this simple exercise.
First Rig
If you haven't purchased anything at all related to Morse code
or ham radio, nothing just might be the smartest purchase you've
made so far. Let's talk keying systems.
There are essentially
two types of iambic paddles to consider. A double lever and a single
lever. The double lever is often called a squeeze paddle while the
single is called a slap paddle. The double lever can be used
as a
slap, but not the other way around.
Squeeze keying is a very
refined technique that is not meant for people whose fingertip
sensitivity has been compromised over the decades by thousands of
gallons of beer. The technique is not known to buy you much
more in the way of speed or accuracy, but trying to embrace it can
prove to be another form of speed barrier. For this reason, I am
going to recommend two slaps and a squeeze.
The first is the Yuri paddle,
CT755 MB-L from Ukraine.
The only problem with this paddle is that the bolt which
adjusts the contact gap should have been set up with locknuts. It
tends to unwind and spoil your gap. Aside from that, this is a great
paddle for the price because everything else is engineered nicely.
As far as the bolt problem, I believe it's about a 1.5mm.
You can see it in
this photo.
It's the bolt (with some black crud on the threads) right up
the middle, that spans the two 24 karat pure gold bars. (Yeah,
right?) The best fix is to buy the same bolt, but with a length of
about 12mm and two nuts and two lock washers. The bar on the right
in the picture needs to be sandwiched between the washers and nuts.
Or even better, ASK YURI TO DO IT! Also, see if he will put a 3.5mm
stereo plug on the end instead of the 1/4" it normally comes with.
My second choice is the
Bushwacker
from American Morse. You can buy it as a kit for $100 or
assembled for $150. You will have to get hold of a wire
with a 3.5mm stereo (male) plug at one end and the other end spliced
and ready to install on the Bushwacker attachment bolts. Just
go on eBay and search for a six-foot wire with a 3.5mm male at both ends
and then you will have two of these wires when you cut it in half.
Then, there's this
stainless steel dual-lever paddle that's sold on various
websites including eBay.
I really like this paddle because it's so tiny and portable, but
the magnets hold it firmly to any steel surface.
The only drawback is that the tension is not adjustable, but I
have not found this to be a problem.
Finally, although I
said two slaps and a squeeze, I'm also gioing to recommend
something midway between a slap and a squeeze, but it requires a
bit of modification. It's this
really fine paddle that's being manufactured in China.
The only problem with this paddle is that the paddles themselves
are spaced too far apart. You need to disassemble
the unit (as described by two reviewers on eHam) to space them
at a proper distance.
Once you've
decided on a paddle, the next thing you'll need is an electronic
keyer. And for that, the choice is simple.
THE PICOKEYER!!!!
YIPPEE!!:
This thing is an absolute stroke of genius in a tiny box. It runs on
a single CR2032 button battery that never seems to quit. I've been
using mine for years now and I can't seem to kill the battery. It's
a fully adjustable electronic keyer with every important feature.
For about $35 you can buy it as a kit with very good instructions.
If you are not handy with a soldering iron, definitely buy it
assembled for about 20 bucks more. If you have it assembled, there
is an audio option you will want to first decide on.
If your
paddle has a 3.5mm stereo plug on the end, the only thing else
you will need is a 3-foot wire with a 3.5mm stereo plug on each
end. If you go with the stainless paddle, you will need
two of these wires. Plug the paddle into the properly
adjusted Pico, the Pico into the mike jack of your computer and
you're ready to boogie in dits 'n' dahs. Well, almost
ready. There is still one more item for consideration.
There is nothing quite like bringing all of your useful limbs into play.
And for that purpose, you will want to fork over a little bit
more dough for this
mouse foot pedal.
(You can actually find one cheaper on eBay.) When you need to stop the action,
you don't want to drop your pen and go fumbling for a mouse.
With this mouse click pedal installed, all you need do during the
initial 4-second delay is to quickly put your mouse pointer
on top of the JLMC Pause button. This will allow you to
stop and go with the foot pedal.
What's Out There
Once you have gained enough speed in copying from JLMC you will
want to test your abilities to copy other hams on the air. The best
place to listen is on the 40-meter band between 7.000 Mhz and 7.125
Mhz, mostly toward the lower end. However, you may be a bit
disappointed in your ability to copy other CW hams.
Truth be
known, there is only one ham who is really easy to understand on
40-meters and you can hear him on weekdays on 7.0475 Mhz during
various but very consistent times of the day. His name is
Robby and his sending is as good as anything JLMC can put out -
even better. If you listen to Robby you will find his
Morse to be very informative on different amateur radio
subjects. But don't try to contact Robby or break into his
transmissions. He doesn't seem to like to interact with
other hams for some reason. Just listen to what he has to
say and get used to the vagaries of CW reception. It's a
great way to become accustomed to the noise and fading that you
don't hear on your computer sessions. You can also hear
Robby on 3.5815 Mhz on the 80-meter band and 1.8025 Mhz on the
160-meter band and these lower frequencies are often
more receivable than 40-meters. By the way, Robby is an advocate of
Farnsworth timing.
As for the other hams, what you will soon
come to realize is that for some reason too many of them seem to be in a
hurry to get their message out and that brevity somehow trumps
apprehension, regardless of the results. When you're in a
rush, the most common
flaw involves blending two characters into one meaningless
prosign for lack of proper character spacing. Rag chewers are
usually
more understandable than the QSO (hello-goodbye) hams, but most
folks don't come close to Robby.
I suppose this is why you
don't often hear a Morse question being asked and answered on the air. Let's
see if we can figure out a cure for this problem.
Do you
remember those treasured moments when you pushed your old man to the
limit and he decided it was time to drill a message into your head? It went something like this - I TOLD YOU NOT TO DO THAT!
What do you
notice about this message? Well, it's obviously a rather loud
message, but you will also notice that the words are spaced out far
more than normal. And the reason for this is that Dad wanted you to
clearly comprehend and retain each and every word, almost as though
you needed time to copy his message to paper.
Now, he didn't
send each word slower like a 78 rpm vinyl being played at 33 rpm.
All he did is crank up the linear amp to 1500 and put a large gap
between each word so that you could have a moment to appreciate every utterance.
This is the secret to being
universally understood
in the CW world. If you are used to sending words at 25/30, a person
at a level of 20 wpm copying with pen and paper will still
understand you if you simply give him a bit more time between each
word to get it down, or, if he's a beginning head-copier, a
moment to comprehend and retain the word. No doubt, with the extra
time between each word, you are sending at something slower than 25
wpm. But at the very least, you are sending at a character speed
which is comfortable to you and wpm speed which is comfortable to
him. Want more proof?
Try to make sense of the
following phrase:
TH ER AINI N SPA INF A LLS MA IN LYIN T HEP
L AIN.
Now try to make sense of this same phrase:
TH E
R AIN I N
SPA IN F A LLS
MA IN LY IN
T HE P L AIN.
The only
difference between the first and second writing of this phrase
is that the gap between each word has been greatly enlarged,
although the improper spacing between the characters of each
word was left the same. Even so, you can see how much more
legible the second writing is compared to the first.
IT'S NO DIFFERENT IN CW.
Where most
people fall short in sending Morse code is in the proper spacing
between characters of a word. This is usually caused by
insufficient spacing between characters or, excessive spacing
between the dits and dahs that make up a single character.
As you listen on the air more and more, you will come to realize
that most CW hams sound more like the first writing than the
second, and the only exception to this unfortunate circumstance
is Robby. But you can at least now see that however flawed
your sending may be, gapping your words will mitigate your poor
character. Sorry, I meant poor characters.
On the
other hand, the main problem of running your words together, or
failing to space them properly, is a phenomenon which I will
call "discombobulation."
One of the qualifications of
being a good copier is your ability to keep an open mind as to
how a word will end up as you begin to hear it being
formed. There is often a tendency to assume the final form
of a word as it's being sent, which may cause a momentary
distraction (stumble) in your copying. For example, as
discombobu......... starts rolling out over the airwaves, you may
hastily assume the final outcome to be "discombobulate," when in
fact, it turns out to be "discombobulation."
This is distracting enough without
having the next word (phenomenon) run together into the whole mix
with inadequate spacing. Now you have the double
distraction of figuring out what discombobulatephenomenon means
when your sender actually said discombobulationphenomenon while
trying to say discombobulation phenomenon. Good luck.
The point here is that stumbling as a result of your
preconceived notion of the first word, would most likely cause
you to miss the first few characters of the second word, even if
the two words were properly spaced. But the fact that both
words are run together, makes it even more unlikely that any of
it will make any sense at the end of the day. And by the way, this problem occurs the same way with
much smaller
words.
All of the above being said, here is my suggestion on what to do if
someone asks you to slow down your send with a QRS. The first thing
you should do is start gapping your words. If that doesn't work, you
might try gapping your characters and your words. The very last
thing you should do is to slow your character speed by adjusting
your keyer.
Most hams like to keep their character speed
pretty much the same all the time. Asking someone to gap their words
is no big deal and most people have no problem in adding a moment
between characters. But most hams get out of their comfort zone when
they are asked to change their character speed up or down by very
much. It's almost like having to learn to send all over again.
As a general rule, at any given sending speed, you cannot
throw someone off by spacing out your words. It's no
different than starting to copy at the beginning of a send.
Also, although it is important to smoothly and evenly complete
each word, if you do
need a moment to think in the middle of a word to get the
spelling right, take it. You'll wind up making two words
instead of one, but then just give a nice long pause at the end
of the word to allow your copier to recognize that it's really
one word you're trying to send. It's better than trying to
push it through, making an error and having to start over again.
A better way to handle it is if you know you are going to have a
problem getting a word spelled correctly, then cut your send
speed in half, right from the first letter. This way your
copier will know right away that you're slowing down for a
difficult word. But as a matter of practicality, you should use words in which
you don't have to struggle for the spelling and realize that
unless you get the first letter of a word or a vowel
wrong, mos mispeled werds r nat wirth corectin. Just keep
going and get it right the next time.
Another
thing to consider is the fact that many ops will tell you that
you should always repeat numbers every time you send them as in
- 700 700 Main Street - when you want to say 700 Main Street.
There is no need for this if it's a short string of numbers, and
in some cases, it can even be confusing. Much better is
to send the numbers at a reduced wpm speed and then leave a nice
long pause after the number to allow your copier to get with it.
If it's a long string like a telephone number, then that's worth
repeating, preceded by the abbreviation - RPT (repeat)
before the second send. The same goes for punctuation
other than a period, a question mark or a comma which are usually pretty well
known. For example, if you are sending an email address
and you want to be real slick, you'll want to leave a nice
pause after the @ ( . _ _ . _ . ) so your copier can have a
moment to recognize that you're not an "at" guy.
As you
get further and further along in your practice sessions and
begin to build up speed, you will sometimes be frustrated by the
fact that some days you just don't have what it takes. For
no explainable reason, your copying skills in exercises that you
were doing well at just the day before are suddenly atrocious,
almost as though you have retrograded three speeds downward.
Everyone has these days. Call it bad CW biorhythms.
But rather than to continue practicing at a lower speed, which
is a bad idea, I find the best thing to do in these situations
is to practice sending only. Usually, there is never a day
in which you are bad at both of these skills.
However,
if you are determined to keep going with copy practice, here's a
way to beat your evil biorhythms for a while and give you some
gratification along with some useful ear training. Cut
your wpm speed by 30% and up your character speed by 5.
For example, if your normal speed for a particular exercise is
20/24, try practicing this same exercise at 14/29. The
slowdown in one with the speedup in the other creates a
relatively huge gap between characters and although you are not
making progress like this in your wpm abilities, you are giving
yourself useful ear training in recognizing characters at a much
higher speed, which will eventually help to increase your wpm
speed. Of course, the gratification comes with the
momentary increase in accuracy of what you are copying.
Never get the false notion that there is no room for improvement
in your sending or that you can create your own distinctive
style or accent of Morse code
For example, when a word happens to end in a dah, some guys with
straight keys like to drag out the last dah just to let everyone
know they are using a straight key. Although this is
tolerable, it's still a tolerable distraction. A few
dragged out words are OK, but making it a part of every other
word has no practical use. More importantly, for the fact
that most people don't take the time to record (and later copy)
their own fist, they never get to realize how sloppy their
sending may become over time. The most obvious
problem is failing to properly space out short characters within
a word thereby allowing them to merge with previous or
subsequent characters. Most importantly, avoid developing
the subconscious attitude that your copier should somehow possess
the extra special talent of making up for your sloppy fist.
Always believe that your copier has less talent than you.
There's probably a way of applying the golden rule to CW.
Morse unto others.....Nah, we're not going there. Until your sending is
indistinguishable from Robby and JLMC, there's always room for
improvement.
As a final note on this whole idea of
additional, or at least proper spacing between characters and
words, and how it may effect the way other hams respond to your
5NN QSO, spend some time with Cliff - N4CCB. He sums
it up pretty nicely:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB1Kc4s0aNE
Also, if
you are new to CW, his QRPSchool.com website has lots of other
interesting stuff.
Prost Zum Guten
Well, that's about it. But allow me to add
this modicum of encouragement.
Some ops will tell
you that if you can't learn to head-copy you should not even bother
with CW. Some classical musicians will tell you that if you
can't memorize music, you shouldn't be performing before an
audience.
The fact remains that the most functional
classical performers are always sight-reading their music and rarely
bother to memorize anything. Ask any conductor. If
this were not so, you would never see a single lectern in an
orchestra.
In the same
light, as a pen-paper copier, you can have just as much fun on the
air as the best head-copiers because even they are rarely sending
above 25 wpm. In addition, you will be able to interpret much more
complex words, phrases and numbers because they will always be
staring you in the face once you've written them down.
As Doc
often told us, the worst thing you can do in music is to try and
be something that you are not. "Find your niche, and
develop it," he would say.
Finally, if
you train yourself to copy Morse code at 25 wpm with your keyboard,
here's how you can enjoy communicating around the world in a way no
head-copier could ever dream of. Imagine someone from France sends
you the message - Bonne journee - or someone from Hanoi sends you
the message - Chuc mot ngay tot lanh - as you type it directly into
Google Translator. The message is the same, but only you can
appreciate it.
Hope to hear you on the air soon.
73
Johann If You Like This Website - Share It!
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