[CW] American Morse Illegal on the Ham Bands?

[Donald Chester]

American Morse wouldn't be too difficult to learn. There are only a few
characters that don't exist in international Morse. The rest are identical,
but represent different letters. 15 out of the 26 letters of the alphabet
are identical in both codes. Others are merely transposed, as:

F = R
J = C
P = 5
Q = F
X = L

Some of the others can be substituted as:
C = IE
O = EE
R = E I
Y = II
Z = SE

The only letter whose character doesn't easily translate to international
Morse is
L = long dash

With numbers,
1 = P
5 = O
7 = Z
9 = X
8 = 6
2, 3, 6,0 use characters that do not exist in international.

Someone proficient in international Morse could, without further training,
get the gist of a message sent in American Morse, much as someone who
understands Spanish can get the gist of a conversation in Italian. By
memorising the substitutions listed above, one could quickly learn to send
and receive the majority of the characters in the other code. With a little
practice, the four numbers and one letter that are totally different could
be easily picked up.

Also, it's not that hard to convert from CW tones to the click-clack of the
sounder. One year at Dayton someone had a sounder set up to run off a tape
with a recorded message in regular international Morse. I found it very easy
to read the message in my head. Of course, over the air it would be very
difficult to distinguish clicks and clacks from random atmospheric and local
electrical noise, so the CW tone would work much better.

http://jhbunnell.com/morsecode.shtml