Off-line android morse trainer?

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41

This is sound advice. As learners, we all wanted to use the key ASAP. That’s natural: it’s fun and easier than copying Morse. But the urge is to be resisted.

You learn the unique sounds of each character via your ‘receiving brain’. Once you have achieved this, it immediately informs your ‘sending brain’ when you sent a character with poor timing.

If you learn to key prematurely you don’t get that feedback and you risk hardwiring sloppy timing and improper spacing, which others are too polite to point out to you. It’s a pleasure to listen to a good ‘fist’ and an effort for a poor fist.

If you [anyone] suspects that has happened, they should record themselves sending random groups of letters, numbers and prosigns then listen to the recording. You’ll notice bad sending immediately.

Many experienced CW ops have bad habits, the worst of which IMO is sending their own callsign with too little character spacing.

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42

I agree with this 100%. Trying to send on a key (of any sort) before one can actually read Morse is a fool’s errand - you have no idea yet what well sent Morse should sound like.

However…

This, again 100%. When I was learning Morse, far far too long ago, I was walking about a mile to school each day and as cars went past me I was “sending” the Morse for the number plates in my head. As I got closer to school the traffic increased and eventually I couldn’t keep up. But each day I was a little better. It worked really well for me. The difference here is that you are not actually sending Morse in the sense of using your fingers to form dits and dahs. It doesn’t much matter whether you are sending good Morse when it’s all in your head!

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43

Looking back at my Morse journey, the single most important piece of advice was from Tom, M1EYP - just do it! Fix mistakes as you learn. Small successes are the feedback (reward) you need to motivate yourself for the next step.

Learning a new skill takes effort, but as everyone knows, learning without doing often gets dull and soon motivation diminishes.

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44

I had a French amateur explain this to me as morse cadence

Exactly, I’ve now started to slow down sending my own call for the tendency to not space correctly. Also the importance of the correct exchange. I’ve worked quite a few new OPs on 17m evening time in the US that are also still learning. There’s the usual splurge of EEEEEEs being sent.

Nobody wants to intentionally develop or learn bad habits with a view of poor discipline or laziness. Suppose there is a balance between making something fun ( motivation ) progressing and getting it right. I found a rest of a few weeks and then coming back to receiving I actually improved.

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45

Very true …

The sage advice about not attempting to send CW until you can receive at 10-12wpm has been around for a long time.

Less clear is the extent to which this mantra is validated by surveys, case studies, hard evidence etc.

Questions to reflect on include:

1 For those struggling to send good CW, what proportion attribute their difficulties to having reached prematurely for a Morse key before they had attained 10-12wpm receiving capability?

2 What reasons do those in the SOTA community offer when it comes to analysing their CW travails? How much of this is actually item 1?

3 To what extent can the use of a twin-paddle and electronic keyer help to ‘iron-out’ poor sending? With the basic timing set for a given WPM, and features such as ACS (Auto Character Spacing), arguably you start to bat on a better wicket. That said, el-keyers are not a silver bullet. You can readily find people on the bands who send rotten code despite using paddles and a keyer.

4 Yet, how long should you stay with your hand-key before seeking to move to paddles? How strong is the ‘move sooner rather than later’ argument?

5 If most of your CW comprises SOTA exchanges, plus a few comments about the weather, what chance are you giving yourself to improve?

From long experience, there are some important factors to take on-board:

1 By having many ‘rag-chew’ style QSOs with people who send good CW, long-lasting changes occur in your brain, muscle memory etc that lead to your sending better CW.

2 As the benefits from item 1 accrue, speed improvements will follow.

3 You need lots of practice (weekly?) sending written pages of groups/prose/numbers to yourself, using an AF oscillator or the rig’s sidetone with the TX off. Trains the subconscious, eventually you’ll be able to multi-task, sending CW and talking to your partner at the same time.

4 You will benefit from listening to sustained amounts of machine-sent CW at speeds on the edge of your receive capability; shipping forecasts, prose, poetry, and whatever else. All to be copied in your head.

5 And finally, you need a written plan. Anyone involved in running, cycling, or other sports, knows that real improvement derives mainly from structured training. You either make your own plan, or follow a plan driven by experienced trainers eg, see link below.

The military trained tens of thousands as CW operators. Every day, the training Sergeant told you what to do, and monitored your progress over many months. Most hams will not have the luxury of such a programme. Their CW plan will need to be self-driven and woven into family life, bringing up children, going to work, shopping trips, house jobs etc.

Though challenging, many aspiring amateur sports-people manage to do this, as do those studying with the OU (Open University), and so forth.

In the end, it probably comes down to commitment, determination and a will to succeed. Easier, perhaps, for those with Type-A personalities :open_mouth:

73 Dave

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46

Some very relevant question, for sure. My thoughts after nearly six decades of CW:

Hard to say. I think it certainly won’t help. The biggest issue most CW ops face, including a few highly experienced ones is letter/word spacing and that is a rhythmic thing - you know it when you hear it. Thus listening on air to real QSOs is a great way to learn what I would call “useful Morse” that is actual QSOs with callsigns, abbreviations and all that. People who play music, like Tom often say that the rhythm of well sent Morse code is just like that of music and there is quite a body of opinion that being a musician helps with learning Morse.

It helps greatly with the ease of sending and it makes sure that dit and dah length/spacing is consistent. What it doesn’t help with, and arguably might hinder, is getting letter and word spacing correct. There is a unfortunate trend for some fast CW ops to shorten these important spaces, as mentioned by Andy.

I moved to paddles as soon as I got my ticket back in 1967. As there is now no Morse test, which required some proficiency in straight key sending, I think that there is no reason now to use a straight key at all if you plan on being anything other than an occasional and low speed CW op. That said, never underestimate the ability of a paddle/keyer to spray the band with unintended strings of dits in the hands of a novice!

A very good point. This is why I think it’s so important to listen to rag-chew QSOs. There’s plenty about, especially on 80m and the WARC bands.

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47

Folks start from different places and learn in different ways. The trick’s in finding the path that works for you, and there’s a fair chance that’ll involve swearing at some things other folk swear by.

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48

John

An experienced user of straight keys who learned as a young lad or early twenties can easily achieve 25 WPM and I’ve seen videos of Chinese (ex military ?) ops sending in excess of 30 WPM .

Although in my case a gap of 50 yrs means I can send no faster then 20wpm now at 76.

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49

Completely agree and, indeed, I got up to around 22WPM on a straight key as a teenager but I found it physically tiring after a while. Paddles, especially fully Iambic are much more relaxing with the arm and wrist resting on the table and just the fingers doing the work. 25WPM is easy, hour after hour, using Iambic paddles. Double that speed is entirely possible.

Back in the day we learned to send on straight keys because we had to: the teaching and examinations required it. That’s no longer the case so whilst there’s certainly enjoyment and satisfaction to be had by sending well on a straight key, doing so is no longer the rite of passage it once was.

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50

I can confirm that as professionally trained operators we never started sending morse until we could read Morse properly, although I cannot remember at what speed we were reading at before we started.

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51

Morse code letters & numbers each have a unique sound (‘sound gestalt’) above a minimum sending speed. For me, e.g. at about 12wpm and above they are unique sounds and I write them to paper unconsciously. At about 10wpm and below they are just dots and dashes, and I have consciously to ID the character.

The threshold speed (wpm) between these two auditory perceptions will vary from person to person, and won’t be a sharp one. It probably varies by character being sent.

It’s probably lower for a beginner and higher for a CW contester. So, I would imagine your RN trainers probably chose a character speed of at least 10-12wpm before letting you loose on the key.

BTW: I agree with earlier comments that - outside of military training rooms - amateurs learning Morse on their own or in small groups will find it hard to resist the temptation to practise sending whilst still learning the Morse sounds. A ‘colourful’ fist might be the price to pay so they don’t give up learning. Like any other skill (e.g. good driving) it’s never to late to go back and work on any bad habits (if you are aware of them) if you put your mind to it.

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The emphasis was on learning to read morse. Any Morse ! Not just callsigns not simple formatted exchanges and so on, but any morse or random groups, foreign language, mixed letters/numbers as you might get in a parts number etc.

There was no Farnsworth or Coch either.

And as far as I recall no one played a musical instrument- indeed the only chap I knew who did play an instrument was an Electrictian who spent time practicing sat on the ships forecastle in good weather squeezing away on his accordion .:shushing_face::shushing_face:

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That was a good read, thank you! David makes some very interesting points about the different ways of learning Morse code.