Thoughts on learning Morse

[apelly]

Granted, this may be off-topic for eevblog, but the subforum does have HAM in the title...

So, I've been plugging away at morse for a couple of weeks. It's an interesting experience.

If I stop and think about the big picture it's too daunting to contemplate really. So much gibberish to get my head around. I've never been a rote learner, and in fact to this day do not have times tables stored in my head, despite hours of recital in primary school.

It appears that everyone agrees these days that the characters should be heard at full speed. I've been using 25wpm for this. Seems OK.

I started with Farnsworth spacing at 15wpm. This is too fast by far. I persevered for some days with this and made very slow progress. Sessions were frantic, panicked, stressful and progress was slow. I was reluctant to slow down on account of there being disagreement and little original content on the inter-tubes about what the best Farnsworth spacing is.

In the end I thought "to hell with it." I've been learning a new character at 11 wpm, which seems fine, and working my way up to 13 wpm as I reach 90% at slower speeds. 13wpm is manageable and doesn't cause excessive panic. My thinking is that at this stage I need to just know all the letters and numbers. I figure I'll get plenty of practice and be in a better position to speed up when I start copying words and callsigns. Hope I'm not wrong!

Anyway; why is it an interesting experience? It appears to be learning without thinking or reason or something. This is more like learning a trick, sort of like learning to juggle, or ride a unicycle, but this is a brain skill, not a physical one (if you see what I mean). Normally when I learn something I think it through and that process cements the information. This is like monkey hear monkey do. But it works. As I said earlier, if I think too hard about the task ahead it seems daunting and altogether unreasonable. On the other hand, a bit earlier on I never thought I'd get this far either.

It's also interesting that I already seem to be better at listening to and recalling the sounds as I copy. I was not expecting this! I'm not seeing letters in my head as it were, but I can remember the sounds and copy behind a couple of characters if I hit a hiccup.

So that's my story so far.

Is there anyone else here who learned just for the fun of it?

[AG6QR]

I've been learning over the past few years, and can now comfortably get on the air and have a conversation at 18wpm or so.  Or I can do a contest-style short exchange at 25 wpm or so.  My learning has been slow, because my practice has been intermittent, but it's not a race. 

There are several computer aids to help you learn.  Koch and Farnsworth are your friends.   I found lcwo.net and justlearnmorsecode.com to be very helpful, but there are others which are similar.

You're right, in that it's not something that requires intellectual thought, but lots of repetition and practice is required to make things fluent and automatic.  You don't want your brain to have to think about dits and dahs, and count them up to turn them into letters.  There's no time for that when the letters are coming fast and furious.  You want to hear the letters directly, and eventually, you want to hear words.  That sort of automatic recognition of the letters and words only comes with practice.

The most similar thing I've done before is either learning to play a musical instrument or learning touch typing.  Or maybe learning a foreign language, but a language has a MUCH larger vocabulary that must be mastered -- Morse code is only 26 letters, ten digits, and a handful of punctuation marks and symbols.

While eevblog is great for general electronics, there are other boards with more ham radio related content, and a bigger population of Morse code learners and users.  Qrz.com has a fairly active CW/morse code forum where you can find lots more training hints.

People can and do argue the usefulness of Morse code in this computerized age.  It may not be essential, but it is fun.  It allows me to communicate over long distances using a very simple, small, inexpensive, low power transmitter than I can build myself.  I've found that the people I've met on the air are consistently polite and helpful to newcomers.  Maybe there is a rude and snarky Morse code operator out there somewhere, but if so, I've not found him yet.

Have fun learning the code!

[Radio Tech]

The only trick to learning code is practice. Take it slow and easy, no need to rush it and try and copy it being sent too fast.  Speed will come as you get more practice.  Another mistake with folks is they study for a few weeks then quit and start back a few weeks later. Just spend 30 minutes to an hour a day will help.

When I got my novice license code was a requirement. So I had to learn it.  I when to the VE session so nervous. I was worried I would never pass the code because of my hearing. Deaf in my right ear and only 60% hearing in my left.

Anyway I sat down and took the code test, it seemed so slow. I copied every character 100 % and even answered the code questions. At this point I was so excited but so nervous that when I took the written I flunked it.   Went to another session a few days later and passed it and the technician test. Tech was all I wanted at the time and was pleased.  This gave me voice on 50 MHz and above and code on everything else. By the time I went for General they dropped the code.

[Fank1]

I have taught several people who swore they could never get it.
I start with the 1 an 2 character letters ( e, t, i, m, a, n ) at 15 WPM spaced at 5 wpm and stay with them until they get them down pat at 15 wpm spacing.
Then I throw in the 3 character letters, then 4 etc.
Once they get them all at 15WPM I increase up to 25 WPM.
One fellow went for his 5 wpm test and didn't have to take it because they sent the extra test first and he passed it !

[hammy]

Do you own a smartphone? Put an app on it to practice every day some minutes. On every occasion you get. It is better to do over the day four times five minutes, than in the evening 30 minutes in one go.

[Fraser]

Just remember that Morse is not dots and dashes.... It is DIT's and DAH's. At higher speeds The brain sends and receives Morse as almost musical rythems.

AR is ._   ._.  but it should be read as DIT DAH    DIT DAH DIT.

I was trained to send and receive Morse at Maritime College and it was daunting. We all achieved greater than 25wpm though. Start real slow and work up to 12wpm using an electronic tutor (PC or something like the ERA micro reader) It's good to have a training tool that can also read your hand sent Morse and show what you actually sent.

I will not bore you with detail of how we were trained by professional Merchant Marine Officers but they did make it hard for us by mixing off-air background noise and other Morse signals with their hand sent Morse ! Sadly I have not needed my Morse since as I joined a land based employer.

It is normal to hit a wall at 12wpm as the Morse starts to become too fast to think about its component elements.....you start to learn the rythem of a character rather than thinks individual DIT and DAH elements.

The funny thing is, once you get used to Morse above 12wpm, it can be hard to receive lower speed Morse as your brain is trained to listen to the rythem and that can get lost at low speeds.

Good luck

Fraser

[grantbob]

I agree that listening really helps. I think "immersion" is a pretty good way to learn anything. One thing I've done that seems to be helping was to use http://lcwo.net/text2cw to create mp3's in CW of the names of people who message or call me and then set up my phone to use those for the alert tones for those people. I hear them when I get messages and it's helping to me to learn the letters.

Everything I've read says to avoid learning the characters visually as it's really an audible experience. I think that makes sense as if you learn the visual pattern then when you hear something your brain will try to translate what it heard to the visual pattern and then tell you what it was. You just want to hear an M and have your brain tell you "M".

-grantbob

[apelly]

create mp3's in CW of the names of people who message or call me and then set up my phone to use those for the alert tones for those people.

That's a nifty idea!

[G0HZU]

With the internet there will be loads of ways to learn morse for both sending and receiving. Go back 20 years or more and many radio hams used to have on air morse classes on 145MHz FM using an audio tone to generate the dits and dahs. These classes were quite effective especially if the main tutor was a good teacher. I've not heard any morse classes on 145MHz FM for many years now but they probably still happen somewhere

[Electro Fan]

Just remember that Morse is not dots and dashes.... It is DIT's and DAH's. At higher speeds The brain sends and receives Morse as almost musical rythems.

Fraser

This has been my experience too.  I started thinking in terms of dots and dashes and also shorts and longs but when I moved to thinking dits and dahs it got easier.  I'm also experimenting with a version of what Fank1 described:  I've been working on sets of characters at a time starting with one set being vowels and another that works it's way a few characters at time through the alphabet.  The challenge is that you need to be able to work on both sending and receiving.  I'm still early in the process so there's probably lots more to figure out. 

A couple things I'm trying are some free Apple apps - the one I like the best so far is called Dah Dit (it looks similar to an Android app that was recommended in one of the Morse threads), and also keying with an real key (Lionel J-38) attached to a frequency generator (set for 750 Hz square waves) and a small speaker.  You can use the iPhone app and the real key separately or you can let the app guide you through characters.  In one mode the app will repeat your custom character set in random orders but with each character sounded 3 times in a row; in between each app sound-out you can work on replicating the pattern and rhythm with the real key.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dah-dit-morse-code-tutor/id310462519?mt=8
- there are a bunch of these apps out there; many seem not so good and most seem to be missing some fairly obvious potential enhancements; this one is ok in some respects (it let's you build custom lists of characters to practice on).  If anyone finds one you like better please post here.  Thx

[voltz]

Just to add to the previous comments, it really is a musical / rhythmic sound that translates into characters or even whole words at times. The word 'The'  for example just becomes one sound rather than a series of dits and dahs. Thats the ultimate aim, for it to become automatic just like someone talking to you. Thinking too hard about dits and dahs actually slows you down!

But at first take it real slow, just take your time, learning a selection of letters and numbers and repeat many times.. Then add more letters and just build it up from there until you get to punctuation. Once you get used to all the characters as morse, it really is practice and more practice to get your speed up. How you practice is up to you, apps, local 2m with a friend on cw, clubs, on line, training boxes...etc

Another thing, once you learn morse you never forget it, Like riding a bike. I am just getting back into radio after a long break of many years and i can still read callsigns and RST reports at around 12 wpm without doing any practice. But my speed has dropped dramatically from what it used to be. If i wanted to jump into a QSO at say 18, i really would need to practice!

Good luck with it, try not to drive yourself crazy with the 'noise', when you start dreaming of morse code, that when you know its starting to sink in lol.

[rob77]

i learned morse because i had to (during mandatory military service). a very effective way is to learn all digits first (starting slow at 40  digits per minute and go up to 120 -150 ) and then add letters - group of 4 letters at a time - every time you add letters start slow-ish  40 wpm and go slowly up to 80-120, once mastered add another group of 4 letters.
never think of dot's and dashes - rather listen to morse as a "foreign language".

[G0HZU]

One tip I recall from a local on air morse tutor was to learn with the characters being sent at the equivalent of 12wpm but to leave longer gaps between the characters when first starting to learn morse.

His argument was that if your primary goal was to pass the 12wpm exam then you should be listening to and recognising the rhythm of characters being sent at the test speed. I'd already passed the exam when I heard this tip so I don't know how valid it is but that is the way he taught morse and he had a lot of successful students

Nowadays, you don't need to pass a morse test to get a full licence here in the UK so maybe this tip is less relevant.

[apelly]

Pretty much all sources agree these days that it's better to learn the characters at full speed with longer spaces between words and individual letters.

I've been working on the characters at 25wpm with an effective speed of 13wpm. It's hard going! Sometimes I can hear the character, but not always consistently. I'm actually practising a few I'm particularly shit at by themselves right now.

[apelly]

Well, today I'm practising 30 characters. It's still hard going and my enthusiasm is waning. The novelty of copying random characters for 5 minutes at a time is wearing off.

Has anyone practised by listening to morse ebooks?

[German_EE]

Hell yeah! When I learned Morse code I was still a field service engineer and I drove around for hours listening to Hamlet and Henry V sent at 12 WPM on the car cassette. They were generated using a program that I had for the Apple //e which took ASCII text and generated CW as an audio tone out of the cassette port.

[ivan747]

Well, today I'm practising 30 characters. It's still hard going and my enthusiasm is waning. The novelty of copying random characters for 5 minutes at a time is wearing off.

Has anyone practised by listening to morse ebooks?

I'm on the same boat as you.

[Negative-Bias]

I did it to get the HF licence I was after, once I got the license , I didn't use the Morse at all, now several years on, I have an interest in it  again, only advice I can give learning little and often like every other day, some clubs do on air practice sessions .It's meant to be enjoyment, not a punishment, keep that in mind.
Paul

[apelly]

Hell yeah! When I learned Morse code I was still a field service engineer and I drove around for hours listening to Hamlet and Henry V

To Too classy for me! Maybe some old Asimov.

Edit: Fix one of my pet internet hates.

[apelly]

It's meant to be enjoyment, not a punishment, keep that in mind.
Paul

True.

Pretty much just have to slog through this stage though.

[Len]

Hell yeah! When I learned Morse code I was still a field service engineer and I drove around for hours listening to Hamlet and Henry V

To classy for me! Maybe some old Asimov.

I'm sure there's a way to rig up a live Morse feed of EEVBlog comments...

[mtntreks]

It sounds like you're just doing the random character thing?  Yuck!  I can see how that is a slog and boring.  Have you listened to on air QSOs?  There's usually some QRS (slower) CW going on on 40m around 7.049 to 7.060 or up around 7.110-7.124.  Try around 7.055 to start.

If you don't have a HF rig, websdr.org will let you listen in.

[Bud]

never think of dot's and dashes - rather listen to morse as a "foreign language".

This is a brilliant statement!

[Negative-Bias]

It sounds like you're just doing the random character thing?  Yuck!  I can see how that is a slog and boring.  Have you listened to on air QSOs?  There's usually some QRS (slower) CW going on on 40m around 7.049 to 7.060 or up around 7.110-7.124.  Try around 7.055 to start.

If you don't have a HF rig, websdr.org will let you listen in.

I agree with this statement   and if you hear Morse you like record it, then play it back bit by bit , until you get it, with your script.

[kg4arn]

FWIW I had a lot of trouble trying to learn the code at first. 
Then I found this method called Code Quick:  http://www.cq2k.com/index.html

In 3 weeks I was past 12 wpm and passed the test.  Passed the 20wpm test after just a little more practice on the air.

I met a Ham who lived nearby and he had tried to learn off and on for over 20 years without success.
I loaned him my materials and he passed the 12 wpm test after about 6 weeks.

Basically the method uses word phrases that make the same sound as the morse characters.
It really worked for me, and when I was active on the air, I could receive at 25 wpm easily.
When the code gets faster that about 30 wpm, it seems the sounds start to change and it is a different ball game, at least for me.

[apelly]

In 3 weeks I was past 12 wpm and passed the test.  Passed the 20wpm test after just a little more practice on the air.

Interesting endorsement. I won't be buying training material however.

I find it interesting that the most popular training software is all closed source. I'd imagined that the HAM community would have been more sharing. All those home brew radios didn't get invented individually. There is some open source stuff, but the commercial or donationware stuff seems much more complete.

[apelly]

Well, progress has slowed.

40 days in and I'm only up to 34 characters. And I've had to slow the effective speed right town to boot. Sigh.

The last few (5?) characters just aren't going in. Well, I know them, if I have time to think, but that's not the point of this exercise. Don't know. Perhaps I didn't learn some of the earlier ones well enough.

At this stage I'm thinking I'll persist with what I'm doing, even though it's not ideal, and practice copying interesting stuff later to speed up.

[rob77]

when i had the feeling the new characters are not going right, then i switched back 2 sets of characters. it's much less time wasted to restart with 2 groups of characters less  than pushing hard while it's not going as expected i did it in less than 1 month , but i had that time more or less dedicated to learning morse  training 4+ hours a day during a military service. if you're learning along your job & family , then few months could be a reasonable goal

[apelly]

Progress!

After 50 days or so I found my motivation lacking, as I noted earlier.. I experimented with some other tutoring software, morse and Teach4. They work in a similar way, by weighting your shittiness with each character and biasing random character generation accordingly. Their characters were in a different order from the software I was already using so I was introduced to the remaining half a dozen in just a couple of days.

I'm still shit, but I hacked together some python to grab rss feeds and have been playing those for a while. This was where I saw magic. I had just started doing this and when I looked up at the screen I had created information!

Apparently today: monday, 02=7ar/ , 0109 hrs men shot didg sydy siege xaan is in a stand-wit olict a sydne y factory where a man was killen nd o thers injud in a trile (Monday, 07/Mar/16, 0409 HRS \BT Three men shot during Sydney siege \BT A gunman is in a stand-off with police at a Sydney factory where a man was killed and two others injured in a triple shooting. \BT)

Need work you think? 

Yes, I know it's shit. And that was only at 11wpm, but it's a damn side more rewarding than random characters!

[@rt]

Hi
I have not started yet, but only because I don’t have a key i’m satisfied with.
I see what you mean, just a brain learning trick, would be like learning times tables, etc.
But you could think of it as the most effective and reliable communication over distance.
It’s an upgrade you can’t buy... well you might want a CW filter lol

[@rt]

That was your output? It’s not normally be so verbose like that ever since telegraph charged per word!

[AustinTxBob]

I can't imagine trying to learn at 13 WPM.  I did it at 5-7 and then worked my way up on the air.  To learn it, you need time to hear the letter, translate it, and write it down all before the next letter arrives.  That is why the 20 WPM character speed and 5 WPM rate is a good way to learn.  Once the letters become "fluent", you can easily get past the 12-13 WPM barrier.

That being said, no one sends farnsworth so learning the code and then copying from the air are different things.

[Co6aka]

FWIW, initially I learned by SWL-ing the commercial ship-shore "VVV beacons" or whatever they were called. (Damn I'm OLD! WTF happened???) That led me to realize as others have written that the character speed should be high but the spacing slow, so you learn the musical rhythm of each character. Don't learn dits and dahs because that limits you to two letters. The repeating/looping beacons made it easy, so perhaps set up a loop of text in a CW practice app, like others have mentioned.

Another thing I initially used to remember the characters was "the tree of Morse" like this: http://www.learnmorsecode.com/pix/learn.gif

Once you learn/remember each character it gets really easy. Also, learn is to skip characters you miss because if they're words you'll understand anyway. The next step is to learn the rhythm of common words. Eventually Morse will sound as if someone was speaking to you in letters instead of words... Aay, Bee, See, Dee, Eee, Eff, Gee, Aych, Eye, Jay, Kay, Ell, Emm, Enn, Ohh, Kyou, Are, Ess, Tee... Well, you get the idea. (Watch out for that damned Pee, it tries to run down your leg!)

Listen to pileups when there's a DXpedition on the air.

Then, when you're able to hold QSOs, go on a DXpedition yourself... I only went to the Bahamas, twice, but by the time I returned from my second I was a fluent 45 WPM, both RX and TX.

[n9zl]

I learned CW for my Extra class upgrade just before they got rid of the code requirement.  I studied for an hour 3 times a week for a month using Gordon West's W5YI tapes at 13wpm/5wpm Farnsworth timing. After 12 hours of practice, I passed the test easily.

[apelly]

Well, things are improving slowly. Three new characters are slowing me up at the moment I think -' and " I always miss a couple of characters after them. I'm not so hot on the numbers either, although my python script includes the date and time so I get to practice them.

Everything I read says to immediately skip characters you don't recognise, but how do you learn them if you do that?

Something else I've noticed is I seem to have learned to associate the sounds with keys on the keyboard and not the letters. Maybe I'm a slow learner, but when I practice copying in my head I can do about 5wpm, but the longer the word is the less chance I'll make it out. On a keyboard I'm practising at 10wpm, but I have no idea what I'm writing until I look up and read it. Is this normal, or am I a lousy speller?

I'm not practising as much as before. Maybe 15 or 20 minutes every second day at the keyboard and maybe the same just listening to the news. At the moment it takes a very long time to get through the news!

[AustinTxBob]

Sometimes reading what you're copying can be bad while learning.  You anticipate the wrong letter because you think you know the word being spelled out and when the letter is not what you expected, you can get lost.  So I wouldn't worry about not seeing what is being copied.

Do you plan on copying with a keyboard or paper/pen?  I would practice via whatever method you think you will use IRL.

[jeffsf]

I agree with all the comments about learning at speed. If the speed is slow enough that your brain can even think of a sequence of di/dahs instead of the complete sound of the character, you'll hit a plateau in speed that is very painful to get through. You've learned a completely different skill than that of high-speed Morse operation. I went through that as a kid getting from 13 WPM for my General to 20 WPM for my Extra. I eventually worked up to copying 40 WPM and that was easier than getting to 20 WPM. I could hear and understand faster, but my fingers couldn't write fast enough to get the minute of solid copy that the ARRL wanted for the certificates back then.

There are many good code-practice applications out there now. Much easier than in the days when you got 5 minutes a night from W1AW, propagation permitting! Plenty of "free" options for Windows, as well as Mac, Linux, iPhone, and Android.

The "Koch method" seems to work well for many people -- learning only a symbol or two at a time at full speed. It may be frustrating to only get brief bits of copy of, for example, 40-WPM symbols at 20-WPM spacing. That is, in my opinion, a much shorter path to high-speed skills than starting slowly and trying to increase.