Two months of at least 20-30 minutes practice per day without fail, using a mix of morse-forge and morse-mania, and still no further along here. The letters symbols & numbers came back within the first 2 days. And I can decode any sequence of morse code that I can hear and remember, given some peace and quiet in which to do it. But ‘head copy’ - decoding it as it comes in. Not a jot.
Tried various tricks to get myself out of ‘replay in my head and decode (once there’s silence)’ into ‘decode as it comes in’ - but no joy.
Tried speed trails on morse forge with individual letters - hit my limit at about 5wpm (25wpm with farnsworth speed of 5), though most of that time is spent searching for the letter on the on-screen keyboard, so no idea what my actual decoding speed would be.
Tried longer and longer words at full (25wpm) speed, or dropped to 10, 15, 20 wpm farnsworth. But all that does is teaches me to remember longer sequences of dots and dashes that I then replay in my head (once there’s some peace and quiet to think in) to decode into letters.
I also seem to hit my limit of ability to turn letters into words without writing them down at about 5 characters - even though I’ve decoded the individual letters, I’ve forgotten how the word started by that point!
Very very frustrating. Gotta say it. This is certainly the longest I’ve persisted at trying to learn morse. But to have made no progress in the last 4 weeks or so leaves me feeling that the approach is not working.
Useful suggestions are welcome. But bear in mind that during the week I work & overnight in remote (no mobile coverage) areas, so any exercises have to be something I can do with an off-line phone or with the radio.
I recommend and use Ditto CW for Android. It has lots of in-built practise material and real callsigns. You can import your own text strings, e.g. I imported a text file with my most-frequent SOTA chaser callsigns in mock SOTA QSOs.
Everyone finds sending easier than receiving and therein lies the problem for learners. Resist the temptation to send Morse before your subconscious brain knows the entire alphabet and frequently-used prosigns automatically. Then when you do start practising sending (straight key or paddles) you will have an instinctive feel for when you sent a character with correct timing or not.
Devote most of your learning time to improving your receiving speed and robustness, e.g. ability to decode with QRN, QRM, QSB, different sending styles, and to learning the many standard amateur abbreviations via listening on-air.
If you do want to check your sending ‘fist’ before going on air, record yourself sending random groups of letters and numbers or text in a foreign language, play it back and try to decode it. You’ll soon find incorrectly-sent characters.
IMO head copying everything is useful mainly for ragchews. That’s a big learning curve to headcopy long sentences with long or uncommon words. It depends what you want to do with the Morse.
If it’s mainly for SOTA where typical QSOs are very short and formulaic, you need only learn to headcopy the very common phases like ‘CQ’, ‘SOTA’, ‘DE’, ‘73’, ‘TU’ etc. You don’t need to headcopy stuff you will be writing down for your log, like callsigns, signal reports and summit references.
I agree. I use it for improving my ability to handle a pile-up and for QSB/QRM. It also simulates chasers being up / down frequency (i.e. high pitch / low pitch). [I’m not good at decoding when chasers’ sidetone is ~100-200Hz] As you say, only on Windows PCs.
The most helpful thing for me was https://morsewalker.com/, thanks to which I lost my fear of pileup, and I decided to go on the air. Web page can be “saved” in the browser and used offline.
I was trying to learn on my own, and while I was making progress, it was slow going. I used lcwo.net mainly.
In the first couple of months of this year, I joined the CW Academy course at fundamental level. This is one up from the beginner level. I can’t recommend this enough. It is structured based on the experience of the CW Academy team with a goal to get you to 25 wpm sending and head copying. It is very supportive, and you end up teaming up with course colleagues and practising outside the twice weekly sessions. Honestly, as others have pointed out, you do need to do the homework on a daily basis if possible.
At the moment, I am no where near 25 wpm, nor do I have great head copy. But since starting the course I have done the following:
made my first CW QSO
made my first CW SOTA activation
made my first CW POTA activation
had a 30 minute rag chew. Admittedly I didn’t get everything, and at 15wpm (ish), you don’t get to say so much!
So, I guess my recommendation based on my own experience is to use any of the online / phone based tools which help you practice, and consider applying to join the CW Academy.
One of my old friends made little progress with his Morse until he joined the weekly sessions of an online club – it really helped. Some do better by working in a group setting and some are motivated and make progress when practising alone. My learning Morse code pre-dates the internet and I had only a pre-recorded C60 cassette tape of Morse going from ~5wpm to ~25wpm of letter/number groups, etc and I passed the – as then mandatory – RSGB Morse Test, and the rest – as they say – is history.
Re 25wpm receiving (as opposed to sending), that’s a laudable goal but not a requirement before you go on air for SOTA, general QSOs and for many contests (e.g. 144MHz Backpackers). I find most SOTA activators and chasers use ~15-22 wpm because – unlike QRO contesters with big antennas – most SOTA ops are using QRP or low-ish power and compromise antennas with wind noise, etc.
Like reducing your driving speed in poor weather conditions, when operating QRP with QSB, QRN, etc operators should send slower to match the radio conditions. Most do, but some don’t realise that sending their callsign once only and slowly is actually quicker than 2-3 times quickly.
A good chaser slows to the same speed as the activator, slower if he needs to. On straight-key activations I can’t key as far as when using my iambic paddles, and won’t be rushed.
I agree with your comments about speed (in fact, with all your comments!). My interpretation of the CW Academy end goal of 25wpm is that it is quite loose, and when you sit in the sessions there are a couple of points made quite often:
Accuracy is far more important than speed every time.
“Good” operators can go fast, but excellent operators match the speed the other station can copy (/send).
In my very limited experience so far, respondents don’t tend to use Farnsworth speed when replying, so as a result I slow my keyer down to 15 WPM when sending CQ. Most respondents follow this speed, and with the structure of the SOTA QSO, I am able to catch the salient points.
@ZL4NVW asked for offline tools for specific reasons: he’s busy with life and doesn’t have always on broadband. CW Academy requires a relatively free schedule and a stable Internet for Zoom calls, I get that past alumni are really enthusiastic about the structured learning experience, but it’s not particularly useful to encourage someone that can’t possibly take part in the program to enroll in it.
The morserino looks ideal. But I’d rather hope to not need it by the time I get to the end of the waiting list! Maybe as the next approach if / when the current app-based learning is declared a failure.
@All
Current wishlist:
An off-line Android QSO simulator would be really good. Bonus points if it lets me prioritise ZL / VK calls. Extra bonus points if it has a SOTA mode.
So far as I can see, none such currently exist, and the only one promised is by morse-forge, which charges a monthly fee equivalent to the purchase price of all other apps in this area. Happy to pay to purchase an app to reward the developer - but not to rent one, especially given how long it’s taking me to learn!
Failing that an offline app that lets me practice copying callsigns and allows me to realistically prioritise local calls (ZL, VK, with a smattering of JA, EU, NA), or supply it with a list of calls to test me with. The only callsign trainer I’ve found for Andorid offline is N5SLN, and it does not include ZL calls.
An answer to the question: To teach myself to head copy on the fly, should I:
a) Drop the farnsworth speed to where I can copy any word length letter by letter (currently 5wpm, as it has been for the last month), and try to slowly increase speed from there; or
b) Keep practising with the farnsworth speed higher (15wpm) where I can copy majority of 3-4 letter words. I’m afraid that this is just embedding the bad habit of waiting for silence then replaying it all in my head, rather than teaching myself to copy on-the-fly.
This looks good on a PC. How did you manage to save the webpage for offline use? I just get the static page with no active content when I try to save the page and the load it when offline (brave browser, on my phone)
I’d stop worrying about head copy, and concentrate on getting the speed up. After about 16 wpm (without farnsworth spacing), you’ll start to recognise the rhythm of familiar words rather than having to string individual characters together in your head. Your vocabulary will expand with experience, I don’t think you will ever be able to magically “head copy” everything. It’s a bit like learning a new spoken language.
This is just my experience. I clumsily taught myself morse to pass the 12 wpm test 55 years ago, and only used it as mode of last resort for a long time. Then, a couple of decades ago I started to use it more, and then SOTA really brought it to the fore, and I started to enjoy it. Now I spend a few minutes every day listening off air, typically on 40m where daytime rag chews are quite common in this part of the world. The subject matter tends to be limited, and in that context my head copying skills are advancing nicely. Once you get the gist of what they are talking about, it gives you time to translate unfamiliar words eg their name and QTH. I think it is a continuous journey of learning, which is great! YMMV
