The Road To Good CW

Being A Good Character

By Ronald Zond, K3MIY
via Dan Fleming, danf@penn.com

Many of the club members know that I am a fair hand at the Morse key. Even good CW operators had to start somewhere. I'll show you how to learn the Morse characters in a week's time and then I will show how to copy in your head.

Learning the Morse characters is not difficult; in fact, its quite easy if you split the alphabet into reverse and inverse Morse.

        Reverse Characters     Inverse Characters    Remains
                                               
        A ._    N _.           B _...    J ._ _ _     Z _ _..
        B _...  V ..._         E .       T _          C _._.
        D _..   U .._          I ..      M _ _        H ....
        F.._.   L ._..         j .___    B _...
        G _ _.  W ._ _         K _._     R ._.
        L ._..  F .._.         M _ _     I .. 
        N _.    A ._           O _ _ _   S ...   
        Q _ _._ Y _._ _        P ._ _.   X _.._   
        U .._   D _..          R ._.     K _._
        V ..._  B _...         S ...     O _ _ _
        W ._ _  G _ _.         T _       E  .
        Y _._ _ Q _ _._        X _.._    P ._ _.
                               ? .._ _.. , _ _.._ _

Numerals are the easiest to learn, and they are part of the reverse alphabet

        1 ._ _ _ _  9 _ _ _ _.   6 _....      4...._
        2 .._ _ _   8 _ _ _..    7 _ _...     3 ..._ _
        3 ..._ _    7 _ _...     8 _ _ _..    2 .._ _ _
        4 ...._     6 _....      9 _ _ _ _.   1 ._ _ _ _
        5 .....     0 _ _ _ _ _  0 _ _ _ _ _  5 .....

This should get you started. Try sending and listening to the characters in pairs. You should learn them quite easily. Part II will show how you can learn to copy in the head. The secret is to copy behind. So good luck and _ _... ..._ _ (73).

Copying Morse; It's In Your Head

Now it's time to use what you've learned. Gaining proficiency in Morse requires that you start copying characters on paper. In order to do this, you copy them in your head first, then you put them on paper or computer screen.

Pencil and paper copy is fine for speeds up to 25 wpm; after that a keyboard is necessary. There are people who can pencil copy at 50-plus words a minute. They do this by "copying behind", that is, they copy on paper a few characters behind what they are hearing at that instant, and memorize what is to be copied next, and so forth. High speed Morse is fun because you can send whole words rather than abbreviations, and if you listen long enough, you will notice that whole words seem rather slow. By this time, you know the characters so well that you don't have to think, its automatic.

At 5 words a minute, copying what you hear is easy; you can block print the character before the next one comes. Try to copy 50 to 75 characters at 5 wpm. At 13 words a minute, the characters seem to run together. At this speed, the value of copying behind becomes important. After a week's practice(30 minutes a day broken into two 15 minute periods), you will be recognizing characters in your head, and even copying some of them on paper. When you get 150 consecutive characters at 13 words a minute, its time to move to 15 wpm. When you copy 200 characters at 15 wpm, start copying the ARRL bulletins at 18 wpm. When you can copy 200 characters at that speed, go back to 13 wpm. I'll bet you will copy 150 characters without thinking about it(you only need 65 characters for 13 wpm, 25 characters for 5 wpm).

One more tip: if you do a fair amount of driving, pop a code tape into your deck instead of Garth Brooks or Shania Twain. Listen to the characters and soon you will recognize them automatically. Braver souls will make a tape of the W1AW high speed practice run that starts at 35 wpm and works downward to 13 wpm. A couple weeks of that and you're ready for the Extra code test. After that, you can think about improving your sending. Hint: make sure you can copy faster than you can send.

For now, 73, Ron, K3MIY