[CW] Thoughts on receiving CW

[Richard Knoppow]

     The post I just sent got me thinking. Mainly about learning 
code entirely by sound as opposed to writing it down. Its 
interesting to me that the advice given in very old books is to 
learn by writing. I think this is because the majority of those 
interested wanted to get jobs as operators where writing was 
absolutely necessary. The method was long hand. I had an old 
military handbook (mostly just the ARRL "Learning the Code" book 
in disguise) which taught printing. It had a system of printing 
to increase the speed. Works up to maybe 15 WPM. Long hand is 
faster but you have to have a good "fist" to be readable. I think 
if you learn by writing it down you won't always be able to 
recognize letters when just heard without writing. I think being 
able to take code in writing is important but that one needs to 
be able to recognize letters by sound alone. Some of the advice 
in the old books really does not make sense, makes me wonder if 
the people who wrote them could actually read code.
     BTW, I have a couple of sounders. Code just sounds different 
on a sounder than as tones, not the difference between American 
and Continental code but the rendition on the instrument. Really 
two different things.
-- 
Richard Knoppow
1oldlens1 at ix.netcom.com
WB6KBL