Category: CW

Tim G4VXE posted an interesting ‘random’ thought about one suggestion he’d heard recently on air to raise your CW speed:

“one of the ways to improve your speed and competency is to listen to as much morse as you can – for example, have the rig running whilst your watching TV or reading. It’s almost as if the subconscious brain starts to process it and it becomes a ‘background process’.

This will help you if you want to be able to send/receive morse at the same time as doing something else.”

It can’t hurt – apart from driving all those around you crazy – and convincing them of all the doubts they already had about you! But maybe that’s what the headphones are for.

Via a link to a Facebook page I found two morse related applications (for Windows) here. This page is interesting not just for the RSS Morse and Morse Keyer programs, but also some handy morse related links.

I discovered a free pdf book ‘Zen and the Art of Radiotelegraphy’ by Carlo Consoli, IK0YGJ. Interestingly Carlo wrote the book in Italian, translated it into English himself and then got Ulrich Steinberg, N2DE to revise the book. Net result: Very readable! When you think about it the first thoughts behind the first morse signals to hit the ether would have been in Italian! Carlo also salutes craftsmen such as Piero Begali I2RTF, Salvatore Canzoneri IK1OJM and Alberto Frattini I1QOD.

There are also links to versions of The Art and Skill of Radiotelegraphy by William G. Pierpont N0HFF (3rd edition – 20 April 2002) and Using an Iambic Paddle by Chuck Adams, K7QO.

Also via a post to the CW email group a link to K6DBG’s page on ‘Some things I’ve discovered about learning and operating CW‘ and a link to a a cross-platform Morse program http://c2.com/morse/.

This site is the distributon site for current and historical versions of A Fully Automatic Morse Code Teaching Machine first described in a May 1977 QST article of the same name by Ward Cunningham.

Ward Cunningham of course is the ham who also developed one of the earliest wikis on the web at http://c2.com/cgi/wiki.

Via Julian G3ILO news of an Arduino based project to build an inteface to enable direct input to a computer with a morse key. Lots of information can be found here.

It looks like a neat little project. I don’t get the feeling it’s going to be offered as a kit or anything. Most of what you’d need to know to make one is on the site including a schematic and the code that decodes the morse code!

This is similar  – in concept at least – to those iPhone morse apps where you can tape the screen in the same way you would a straight key, and the app gives you feedback on your morse – at the most basic level by translating it back to what you hopefully intended to say.

What would be even more exciting would be an interface that could also handle paddle input to PCs … a bit like the $1.99 iPhone app iDitDahText by Marc Vaillant. You can only load this one on to jailbroken iPhones. It’s available via the Cydia Store. It enables you to enter text in all iPhone apps using the equivalent of an iambic keypad on the screen up to 50 wpm. Great party trick!

Or better still isn’t there a way to connect the output of the iPhone or even the iPad – electrical not audio – to control a keyer and a transmitter. Throw in PTT control while you’re at it!

Stumbled across interesting YouTube video on “Iambic Keyer and Technique” attempting to teach how to use an Iambic keyer. It’s about 5 1/2 mins long. Another video from IK0YGJ simply shows the sender using a beautiful Begali Sculpture and sending at 50wpm.

While I’m at it I should include the link to the 9mins plus video explaining how to use iDitDahText on the iphone.

This page has a listing of how different alphabets and accented characters are sent with morse including Russian, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Japanese and Korean. I feel an overwhelming urge to change it from its dots and dashes layout to a didah format to reinforce the sound and not the visual structure of the characters. As comprehensive as these charts are, I’m still a little in the dark about some accents used in Portuguese. It could be that they’re simply not used in morse. Maybe listening to QSOs is the only way to confirm this.

Even the listing on the Portuguese Wikipedia page is missing the ã character. And this Brazilian page makes no mention of accented characters, even though it does explain that the codes for each character reflect their frequency in English.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

But make sure to check out the new training section on the SKCC site featuring mp3 files prepared by John KF7BYU.
So far the following texts are online, some in speeds ranging from 5 up to 50 wpm, along with text files:
The War of the Worlds, The Gettysburg Address, The Jabberwock, The Night Before Christmas, Hams Christmas and The Raven.

I rejoined the CW Operator’s QRP Club Inc. after a long absence. I was surprised to discover I’m entitled to my original membership no #56. It’s probably been almost two decades.

I have fond memories of the Lo-Key magazine, but I’m also keen to have a go at the club’s Milliwatts per Kilometre Award! 10,000km on 5W or 1,000km on 500mW!

Fantastic approach:

“You can copy 25 wpm in three weeks, with just 15 min a day practice. Start at 35 and work down… You listen, and listen some more. Use the W1AW practice run that starts at 35 wpm. After a few weeks, 25 wpm will sound slow, and you should be able to write the characters.”

Ron on the CW list describing how he broke through his own plateau. Extreme Farnsworth.