[CW] In your head

[Neil]

Hi all,

I have a question about what goes on in your heads when
copying code.

Tiny background: I'm relearning cw operation. After 40 years
away. Max
code speed was then, and is now, 15-18wpm. After coffee.

Here's the question. My mind wants to visualize the incoming
stream of
Morse as an illuminated LED-like ticker tape. If I only
focus on the incoming
letters, I can track fairly well. But to get meaning, I need
to mentally track
the composition of the ticker stream. Parse, somehow, the
words. Then concatenate
them into meaningful language. 

I can understand how experts may only 'hear' entire words or
phrases, and
forego the ticker tape. I can do that with simple words =
NAME IS, UR RST, Qsignals, 
73, stuff like that. The meaning just comes through
automatically without thinking
about it.

Is my ticker tape visualization a temporary way station on
the way to just
'getting' chunks of code all at once? 

The real problem with the ticker tape is that if I mentally
scan it backwards
to try to pick up word meaning, I've instantly lost focus on
the incoming stream --
and produce a gap. The gap of course worries me, so I loose
the whole ballgame
for a bit.

You can see I'm an analyzer. Maybe that's my problem :-)
I have a feeling most of you will say 'just practice...'

73, Neil KH6EAM 


Neil Murphy
www.ghostdog.com
650.375.0886 wrk
650.533.2015 mobile