On Wednesday 19 March I gave a short presentation about “Learning CW in 2025” to my club, Waverley Amateur Radio Society.
It’s essentially about techniques to master Instant Character Recognition and its partner Instant Error Recovery and a distillation of ways to use Morse Training Apps such as the Word List Trainer to learn those skills. Below are links to websites, online resources, applications, individuals and organisations with the same focus. My debt to the thinking of people like Tom Weaver W0FN and Glenn Norman W4YES is clear.
These are sites, documents and applications I mentioned and that I think are of most value for anyone wanting to learn Morse code (as well as some I failed to mention).
I don’t think there’s ever been a better time to learn CW or a better range of resources available to ensure success.
I was surprised at how many people turned up in person and online. My favourite question was whether Morse is harder or easier to learn than Ancient Greek?
Australian Simplex right-angled key by Leopold Cohen
Morse Code Ninja Kurt AD0WE’s massive site devoted to learning Morse. He has thought long and deep about learning and teaching Morse.
The Long Island CW Club websiteoffers informative documents about their approach to teaching Morse. I think they represent excellent value to anyone wanting to learn or improve their Morse skills. This club with almost 7,500 members globally is able to do remarkable things with the talents of its members.
Word List Trainer This is the web based application I briefly demonstrated during the talk, and the one I am most familiar with. It’s developed by Stephen Phillips.
ICR Trainer This is another aspect of the same application suited to developing ICR skills.
LICW Club Practice Page This application is similar to the Word List Trainer, and actively developed by the LICW Club.
Morse Runner a very popular and realistic contest simulator. Even seasoned CW contesters warm up with this application. (Windows)
youtube
Morse Code Ninja Over 4,000 videos devoted to learning CW at every stage and speed
On Wednesday evening I went along to a talk at a nearby library by David Dufty about his recent book ‘The Secret Code-Breakers of Central Bureau – How Australia’s signals intelligence network helped win the Pacific War’ published last year by Scribe.
The Secret Code-Breakers of Central Bureau by David Dufty
It’s a great story that does uncover previously unacknowledged contributions. Dufty’s interest was sparked by a newspaper mention of Australian wartime code-breaking on Anzac Day 2012. His interest triggered a comprehensive research trail.
It’s a great read with a solid bibliography. He interviewed about twenty people who worked on breaking the Japanese codes. From a standing start, the operation grew to involve over 4,300 Australians – a venture, Dufty says, it’s hard to imagine us being able to mount as readily today.
He mentioned many of the characters from Australia’s early radio history, including Mrs Mac, Florence MacKenzie, who trained thousands of women morse operators who in turn were used to train many Australian servicemen.
He also mentioned Eric Nave who was responsible for breaking Japan’s Naval codes. Nave as a young naval cadet had spent years in Japan learning the language and culture of the country.
The character with the best nickname would have to be Keith ‘Zero’ Falconer. He was the country’s top interceptor of Japanese Kana coded messages. He got the nickname from his colleagues as every single day of Kana code training in Melbourne he would score zero errors in the test. Japanese hams can still be heard conversing in this code on the bands today.
Japanese Kana or Wabun morse code
The character who stands out from David Dufty’s talk on Wednesday evening is Stan or Pappy Clark. Apparently, prior to enlistment, his work was scripting radio serials for children. The mention of the magic word radio was enough to catch the eye of people recruiting for radio intelligence work, and it turned out to be a fortunate selection for Australia.
Stan Clark used his talents to develop a comprehensive knowledge of the Japanese communication networks and was able to analyse the dynamic ebb and flow of their radio traffic. Even if we weren’t able to decode every message the broad overview – which Dufty interpreted as the ‘metadata’ of the enemy’s radio communication – of this traffic analysis played a crucial role in determining the allied strategy of the war and effectively saved thousands of allied and enemy lives. Macarthur’s famous island hopping strategy was directly informed by this intelligence. One of the special things about Wednesday night was that unknown to Dufty until the end of his talk, Clark’s grandson and family were in the audience.
I’ve been wondering whether I should try to synchronise my most recent efforts at learning and improving my morse with a similar complementary neural mapping exercise of simultaneously learning to touch type as I practice copying morse code.
I was googling around – on the off-chance someone had developed the ultimate piece of software which combined G4FON Koch CW Trainer with Typist or some other touch type trainer, oh and for the Mac would be good – using the term “learning morse and to touch type at same time” and I discovered via Google Books Lewis Coe’s ‘The Telegraph’. Here on page 109 is mention of how operators could recognise their call in their sleep!
The highlighting is due to the google search term.
On pages 69-70 there’s mention of how the older operators used a mill to take down messages as they streamed in over the line.
Maybe the best approach would be to change the learning sequence of characters to match the character sequence of touch typing so that every character gets a double whammy of learning reinforcement. So F, J, D, K, S, L, A and ; (?) instead of K, M, R, S, U, A, P, T, L and O.
It shouldn’t be too hard to generate suitable static mp3 audio files of the touch type progression of characters. It would be great if there was a way to randomly generate according to this new progression, in a similar way to the G4FON software, with the alternate character sequence.
Also, I’m sure someone somewhere must have considered the learning pros and cons of such an approach.
I also found the perfect font to use. It’s called MILL
I was meandering around the web this morning and stumbled on to a page where famous key collector and curator Tom Perera W1TP had re-created the morse key setup used by Walter Winchell to introduce and punctuate his radio and later TV broadcasts. They were a pair of Vibroplex bugs.
The Vibroplex ‘Lightning Deluxe’ and ‘Original’ bugs
I grew up in Sydney in the 1950s and remember how radio station 2UE would start their news bulletins with a brisk CQ CQ. They were probably inspired by Winchell. Another memory is watching ‘The Untouchables‘ on TV with narration by Walter Winchell.
Ironically in his early years as a gossip journalist he was close to prominent criminal identities and later became friends with J. Edgar Hoover. He was Jewish and in the lead up to the second world war was one of the first Americans to criticise Hitler and those in the US who supported him. Another of his targets was isolationist Charles Lindbergh. His fame followed his reporting the famous kidnapping and subsequent trial.
From the clip you can hear the rapid-fire delivery. In many ways it’s like a precursor to much of what we consume today.
Walter Winchell reporting – from a brilliant site about old mics – coutant.org
He attacked the Klan and its supporters. After the war he aligned himself with the Senator Joe McCarthy’s hunt for communists. But within this short clip there are a couple of places where he briefly questions a couple of issues that were to haunt the US for the next couple of decades – Vietnam and cigarettes and cancer.
Complex and probably unattractive, what I want to know is if he actually knew how to handle those Vibroplex keys.
I’m one of those people who learnt morse code completely the wrong way. Starting off in the seventies with no guide I simply tuned into nightly morse transmissions sent by local hams at a very slow rate. I think they started at 5 words a minute. The main risk there was nodding off between words or impatiently guessing the wrong word.
Contemporary wisdom is that you should start listening at a much faster rate, say 15 or 20 words per minute. This is to prevent you counting dots and dashes in your head, and to make it easier for you to recognise the letters, numbers and even words by their sound.
Learning 15 wpm after mastering say 8 wpm is almost like learning a new language. Students of morse talk of ‘a plateau’ at 10 which is a mighty barrier to progressing up to a more useful conversational speed.
My personal goal is to be able to copy and send at 25 wpm and be able to sustain it over a couple of hours, and to be able to read mostly ‘in my head’, only using pencil and paper for details like names and callsigns.
Now that morse code is no longer compulsory for any ham licenses, surprisingly it seems to be more popular than ever! Especially with those hams who like to use low power to make contacts, or to take the lightest possible transceiver to a remote mountain top as part of the global ‘Summits on the Air‘ activity. Morse gets more mileage than voice per watt, and often these tiny transmitters are only putting out a couple of watts power. And there’s something delightful in having the skill to read the beeps.
But for me it’s a skill I have to keep working on. I think in my twenties I was quite at ease chattering away at about 12 wpm seemingly for hours on end. Four decades on with a large slab of radio silence in between, I’m quite rusty, even though I know the basics are still there like riding a bike.
I’m a bit wobbly at the paddles, having grown up with the old fashioned straight key (the type you’re likely to have seen in old westerns). But you can feel slow but definite progress from every bit of practice you put in.
Yesterday I had my final CW Academy session. As an indication of how good it was and how much we valued it, not one of the five of us ever missed a single session! There were sixteen hour-long sessions over two months. And it was all free!
Late last year I noticed a couple of messages from Jack W0UCE inviting hams keen to improve their CW skills to join in and pointing them to this page detailing the thinking behind CW Academy’s approach.
What was on offer was a series of online sessions in a small online group re-learning the code. The hour-long sessions are designed to get you to read in your head and to break or avoid habits (like writing everything down) that will prevent you from increasing speed later.
The target for our beginner group was around 20wpm. The sessions took place using Oovoo which is like Skype for groups. (Apparently it’s important that the instructor can see who is having difficulties.) We logged on twice a week. In between times we were expected to practice daily using a nifty online tool, Morse Translator. This neat web app lets you practice listening to code and adjust both character speed and Farnsworth spacing. Our default setting from day one was 20wpm character speed with gaps to yield an effective speed of 10wpm. Morse translator is a great model to help practice sending as well. I found including sending practice helped lock in recognition of words.
Our teacher or Elmer was Rob K6RB. He shared his intense enthusiasm for CW with us as well as his experience on air. After a few weeks of walking us through the alphabet, numbers and prosigns and practising new letters and words, Rob gradually upped the speed. Then the rubber hit the road about week five when we were QSOing back and forth. Rob patiently introduced us to the format of the typical QSO, contesting and even handling a DXpedition. His aim was to prepare us for these so that we’d know what to expect and what was expected of us when we joined in. We got the benefits of decades of operating experience in these sessions.
The CW Academy is an initiative of the CW Operators Club. CWops is international in focus and it was great to be accommodated as the token DX in the group. As they say on the webpage “available to anyone, anywhere”.
The training has got me confident to get back on the air with a practical code speed and as a bonus, interested for the first time in having a go at contesting, initially the CWops fortnightly Mini-CWT contest which we spent a couple of sessions rehearsing.
A big TU to CWops and Rob K6RB for all their efforts running the CW Academy.
There’s been a higher than usual level of activity on the AT-Sprint email list over the last few days as hints have emerged of a possible new offering of the popular MTR (Mountain Topper Radio) the latest of Steve Weber KD1JV’s radios that define the possibilities of ‘trail friendly’. To get a view of one in action check out this video from G4ISJ shot on a SOTA activation.
Steve KD1JV’s popular MTR ‘a very small, very efficient, two band rig’ is set for another future offering
Steve KD1JV is the designer behind the PFR-3 and a number of other radios offered by Doug Hendricks’ QRP Kits along with the new Tri-bander Transceiver kit. But he also enjoys a passionate following for his high performance but tiny (Altoids tin size) radios in the ATS series where ATS stands for Appalachian Trail Sprint. These radios (especially the ATS-3B and the MTR) are prized by ham hikers and walkers who watch the ounces and milliamps. They are also an example of masterful interface design using small push buttons and minimal LED display. As Steve mentioned recently in a post reflecting his deep field operating experience “Little tiny rigs and knobs don’t work well together”.
During the buzz earlier today about whether he would offer more of the MTR kits (he will), Steve also announced his latest project “An 80/160 dual band rig with direct conversion receiver and a DDS/PLL hybrid VFO using all through hole parts.” (The ATS series made extensive use of microscopic SMD components and lots of the assistance Steve offers via the AT Sprint Yahoo group is concerned with discovering and rectifying makers’ errors assembling these devices.)
His website carries a pretty detailed three-page description of the design thinking behind the new rig which he’s calling the Super Deluxe Direct Conversion Transceiver. Tantalisingly he’s suggested it may be able to work at 500kHz. The new rig also features an “LCD frequency read out, built-in keyer and rotary tuning”.
He’s planning to offer only 50 kits at about US$75 at the end of November. Expect to see them sell out in two minutes! I suspect if he offered 200, they might last an hour or two.
Just back from a few hours spent at the annual field day at Wyong hosted by the Central Coast Amateur Radio Club. This has to be the big day out for Australian radio amateurs. People came from near and far. It’s a good barometer of the health of the hobby and the local industry supporting it. I was delighted to see – as the first exhibit as you enter – a full display of the Elecraft K-line presented by Gary VK4FD. Only thing missing was a KX3. Gary of course is an enthusiast, not an employee of Elecraft. A pretty good indicator of the passionate support the company enjoys.
The flea market became pretty busy as the morning progressed, but maybe not as many stalls as previous years. One stall that stood out for me at least was Stephen VK2SPS’s which included his offering of keys and bugs, surplus to his collection as he focuses on homegrown Australian manufactured keys. Eagle-eyed visitors will spot the McElroy bug (top, centre) and an interesting wooden based French military key towards bottom right.
Brilliant sunny weather, but not too hot to spend some time wandering about looking for a bargain or three. Also saw an impressive display of homebrew gear from members of the ARNSW Homebrew group.
On Halloween Steve Weber KD1JV has announced to the AT-Sprint Yahoogroup he’s considering planning to take orders online for the ATS-4B at 11:11:11 AM, EDT on the 11th November, 2011. Clearly a time and date not to be forgotten. Shipping would follow close behind then. One exciting aspect of this latest ATS-4B version is the planned integrated CW/PSK decoder on a daughter board, planned for a January release.
And the other hotly awaited item for the QRP and HFpack crew, the new Elecraft KX3 is now likely not to start shipping until the new year, 2012 I presume. An apparently hastily written update indicates “KX3 estimated ordering date (Winter 2001) and shipping date (January)”.
UPDATE: We’re getting closer. On 2 November this has been updated to “KX3 estimated ordering date (Nov/Dec 2011) and shipping date (Late January)” [my emphasis].
The other day I noticed a very interesting photo on a fellow Australian ham blogger, Peter Mark’s site. The blog entry was titled a “Radio nerd’s tour of Canberra“. The first photo is described as ‘a transceiver with a nifty antenna tuner’. But the instant I saw it I sensed there was slightly more to it.
Winnie the war-winner seen in the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. It was named after British wartime Prime Minister, Winston Churchill.
The fact that it was built on a beaten up old kerosene can prompted me to google “Winnie the war winner” and the results confirmed Peter’s photo is of this most famous piece of Australian ham homebrew ingenuity. Max (Joe) Loveless’ skill to be precise. The photo prompted me to find out the story of this iconic wireless set that’s an inspiration to a generation of Australian radio hams proud of their traditions of ‘making-do’.
The wikipedia entry on the Battle of Timor gives detailed historical and military background to this little radio’s moment of fame in April 1942.
As a result of British intrigue Australian troops were sent to Portuguese East Timor to disrupt any Japanese invasion on Australia’s northern doorstep. By April the 2/2nd Independent Company had been fighting a guerilla campaign for four months. Many were ill and they were low on supplies, and had had no contact with Australia since February.
For weeks a team had been trying to build a transmitter from salvaged parts from damaged radio gear. Before the war Max Loveless was a radio amateur in Hobart with the call 7ML. He became a Signaller with “Sparrowforce” on the Dutch part of Timor with the Australian Infantry Forces (AIF).
Report on Winnie the war winner in the Melbourne Argus for 1 Jan 1943 – page 12
Bill Marien reported the story in the Melbourne Argus of 1st January 1943:
“Force Intact. Still Fighting. Badly Need Boots, Money, Quinine, Tommygun, Ammunition.”
This was the first official message received in Australia from the lost AIF commandos of Portuguese Timor who, for 59 days after the Japanese landing on the island, had been written off as missing or dead.
The signal came to Darwin on the night of April 19. It was transmitted by “Winnie the War Winner,” a crazy contraption built from scraps of wire and tin, and pieces of long discarded radio sets.
When the commandos showed me the incredible Winnie recently, it was easy to recapture the scene of that night of April 19.
In the thin air of a Timor mountain hideout, 4 bearded, haggard Australians were working by the smoking, stinking light of a pig-fat flare. Three of them watched anxiously as the fourth thumbed a Morse key. Weak batteries sent the dots and dashes of the morse dimly across the Arafura Sea to the Northern Territory of Australia. The tension was something physical as the operator strained his ears for a reply. At last a reply came.”
The AIF commando force which had been in Portuguese Timor were joined by other Australians from Dutch Timor including two signalmen, Cpl John Sargeant, of Bonshaw, NSW, and Lance-Cpl John Donovan, of Lindfield, NSW. Under leadership of Capt George Parker, of Earlwood, NSW, they joined Sigs Max (Joe) Loveless, of Hobart, and K. Richards, of Victoria, both of the original commando force.
“On March 8 the 4 men got to work — Loveless just out of sick bed and Sargeant just recovered from malaria. Three days later a Dutch sergeant, exhausted, stumbled in. He had carried what he thought to be a transmitter-receiver 40 miles through some of the roughest country in the world. It was an ordinary commercial medium-wave receiving set – and out of order.
CORPORAL WENT SCROUNGING
Loveless, whose knowledge made him No 1 man of the team, thought he could build a one-valve transmitter from parts of this set and of another small and weak set. He planned a circuit, and all the commandos were asked to be on the lookout for anything that might serve as a radio part.
Cpl Donovan went scrounging at Attamboa, on the north coast, to see what he could salvage, while his companions recovered an abandoned army set. The parts of the 3 sets were unsoldered, and a bamboo used to catch all the melted solder for re-use. Loveless had carefully preserved 2 small batteries, but they needed recharging. A generator was taken from an abandoned 10-year old car and rigged to a series of wooden wheels, which a native was persuaded to turn. The set was complete on March 26.
It would not work!
Three of the team who helped Max Loveless build Winnie the war winner re-enact transmissions from a hill in East Timor – Signaller Keith Richards, Corporal John Donovan and Lieutenant Jack Sergeant. Photo by Damien Parer.
The only tools available were a tomahawk, pliers, and screw-driver. They had no test equipment to determine the set’s frequency. The coils were wound on pieces of bamboo.
On March 28 Donovan returned from Attamboa – laden like a treasure ship. He had the power pack from a Dutch transmitter, 2 aerial tuning condensers, 60ft of aerial wire in short lengths, and a receiving set. Next day the men had to move all their precious gear, for the Japanese were getting too close.
Loveless got to work on a second transmitter twice as big as the first, and built it into a 4-gallon kerosene tin. A battery charger was recovered from enemy-held territory. To get it 14 commandos went through the Japanese lines to the old Australian headquarters at Villa Maria. There, within 100 yards of Japanese sentries, protected only by the dark, they dug up the charger which had been buried when the headquarters were evacuated.
HEARD DARWIN WAS SAFE
On April 10 the signallers heard Darwin on the receiver, and knew then that Darwin was still in Australian hands. But their second transmitter was also a failure.
Loveless had another idea, but he needed more batteries. Four were found. Then the petrol ran out and the charger could not be kept running. So they raided the Japanese lines and carried off tins of kerosene. Finally the charger was started on kerosene and run on diesel oil.
With batteries at full strength they signalled Darwin on April 18, but got no reply. They did not know that their message had been picked up on the Australian mainland and passed on to Darwin, that all transmitting stations had been warned to keep off the air and listen to Timor the following night.
You can get a good sense of the story from this video of the documentary ‘The Men of Timor’ filmed in Timor by Damien Parer in late September 1943. You can see a reconstruction of the building of the radio about 3’16″ in from the start.
On the 19th April they heard Darwin but their batteries failed again.
On the night of April 20 they again got Darwin. But Darwin was suspicious; demanded proof of their identity. So questions and answers like these were rushed across the Arafura Sea:
“Do you know Bill Jones?”— “Yes, he’s with us.”
“What rank, and answer immediately?”— “Captain.”
“Is he there? Bring him to the transmitter. . . . What’s your wife’s name, Bill?”— “Joan.”
“What’s the street number of your home?”
Once they provided the correct answers, help was on its way.
I found the newspaper report on the National Library of Australia’s brilliant Trove, where digital versions of many Australian newspapers have been put online courtesy of crowd-sourced editors across the global internet. Truly astounding!
Great news for owners of Apple portable devices who want to access Fabian Kurz DJ1YFK’s brilliant lcwo.net site on the move. LCWO stands for “Learning CW Online”. If you don’t know the site and you want to learn morse code or improve your code skills, this is one of the best destinations available – and it’s totally free.
LCWO – Learn CW Online
Since May Fabian has been working on alternative ways to deliver the material, using HTML5 as an alternative to Flash.
As of Tuesday this week, Fabian has enabled the HTML5 player option to work with Apple Safari so it can handle mp3 files. And now at last iPhone and iPad owners can use the site as it was intended. Now I have no excuse for not getting my CW into shape.
Another cause for celebration is that today the lcwo.net site welcomed its 20,000th visitor. As Fabian says on the site “The reports of CW’s death are greatly exaggerated.”
Looking back over some older email list posts today I came across an interesting exchange of posts on the QRPp list.
In early August Arnie Coro CO2KK announced latest progress on the ‘Super Islander Version 5 QRP transceiver project’. Key design criteria include using “as much as possible parts that could be recycled from easy to find sources of electronic components” such as toroids from PC boards salvaged from failed compact flourescent globes, and other treasures from broken VCRs, TVs and fax machines.
One transcript is reproduced on dxzone.com and is an undated description of the project detailing what appears to be the first valve version of the project – I think designed by his friend Pedro, CO7PR. It brings home in a softly stated way the challenges and barriers facing radio enthusiasts in countries which for one reason or another don’t enjoy relatively high wages to afford factory made gear, and who have to be much more resourceful in making do with what they have available to get on the air.
A rude dismissive comment on the QRPp list prompted a firm but calm response from Arnie.
“Yes amigos, it is very easy for people having access to the money and the possibility of buying factory built radios or even well designed kits with full instructions and each and every part required… even washers , to just sign a check or complete and electronic transaction that will bring to their homes a nice piece of equipment…
But that is not the case for many of us, that do enjoy very much the amateur radio hobby, and think not only about ourselves, but also about those that may benefit from also well designed, easy to assembly and to adjust radios that can be built using locally available parts.
Try to find even the lowest cost ceramic filter for building a single sideband rig in no less than 130 countries around the world and you will meet with the fact that they are impossible to locate, and the same goes for ferrite and powdered iron toroids, IF transformers, RF power transistors, small relays , RF connectors, resistors and capacitors, not to mention quartz crystals and integrated circuits !”
Arnie ended one of his missives to the QRPp list with this plea:
“Maybe one day the International Amateur Radio Union could sponsor a similar project to help promote amateur radio among young persons that live in poor nations where buying a factory made transceiver may be equal to the full salary of a worker during five years or more !!!”
I remember that one of the first QRP designs I ever built (back in the late 1970s) was a simple VXO controlled 6 W 20 m CW transceiver that appeared in QST (Dec 1978). It was later suggested as a prototype IARU transceiver as ham aid for developing nations. (This radio certainly worked for me, with a first contact into the US west coast with W6QR from a camp site in Kangaroo Valley!)
Arnie’s idea appears much more economical and self reliant, drawing on the potential of recyclable components. It’s also a design thought through from a Cuban perspective rather than a first world one.
You can even hear an interview with Arnie Coro recalling the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. [audio].
