[CW] Sending Better Morse!

Sun Feb 20 06:00:29 EST 2022

I agree with you, Hans, and both of those guys sent very well.  I guess I
should have added that it's like music, the musician tries to play as
perfectly as possible, but instead of becoming sterile, too perfect music,
when he lets go of his trying and just "does it", it becomes "soulful" and
the slight imperfections become a type of beauty all it's own.

That being said, I still love the old telegraphy sound of the Great Lakes,
and that of the old and now dead, South American flight radio officers who
let their dots be sent at nearly double the speed of their dashes - but
they had accurate dots in number, just machine gun fast.

If I had a choice of copying a long WX broadcast from a machine or from a
good operator, I'd always go with the good operator, and my favorite keys
to copy were the sideswiper (double speed key) or the Vibroplex - a well
sent Vibroplex was a joy to copy - and I'd not copy the machine sent WX
broadcast.  Also machine sent broadcast at 27 WPM was easier to copy than a
boring one (same content) at 16 WPM.  Been there, done that.

73

DR
N1EA

On Sat, Feb 19, 2022 at 9:34 PM Hans Brakob <kzerohb at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hopefully I won’t get excommunicated or circumcised for this, but I LIKE a
> fist that’s personalized a bit.  Think KH6IJ or W4KFC in old time SS drills.
>
>
>
> Sterile machine-grade morse is for machines to copy.
>
>
>
>
>
> *73, de Hans, KØHB*
>
> “Just a Boy and his Radio”™
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *From: *Bill Lanahan <wa2nfn at gmail.com>
> *Sent: *Saturday, February 19, 2022 21:56
> *To: *CW Reflector <cw at mailman.qth.net>
> *Subject: *Re: [CW] Sending Better Morse!
>
>
>
> Today you’d have a lot more room in your sea bag if you just loaded the
> Precision CW Fistcheck app, by our own DJ7HS. You could hear, see, and get
> timing stats for every dit/dah/space and then play back an exact copy of
> your sending to hear what other guy heard (or would have to suffer
> through).
>
>
>
> BTW what’s a black and white TV lol.
>
>
>
> If new technology like Fistcheck can get me sending half as good as your
> fist, I’ll be delighted.
>
>
>
> 73 wa2nfn
>
>
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
>
>
> On Feb 19, 2022, at 3:33 PM, David J. J. Ring, Jr. <n1ea at arrl.net> wrote:
>
> 
>
> Pardon me if I share some of my delusional past with you.
>
> Since I was in all the good Morse code amateur clubs, I mistakenly thought
> I sent excellent Morse code.
>
> It was good but not excellent, the operators at WCC, WSL (known for it's
> excellent Vibroplex operators - you will hear them on this recording:
> https://archive.org/details/LastEastboundTrans-atlanticVoyageOfqueenMarygbtt)
>
>
> I had gotten a DGM SRT 2000 keyboard after JE (Jan Edwards, W5EV (SK)
> recommended it, and I put in a CP Clare mercury wetted 50 VA relay in it so
> I could key the 200 mA keying circuits on the ships. (photo attached).
> [image: DGM Electronics Advertisement for MKB-2000]
>
> However, in the 1990s I came into possession of a beautiful used SRT-2000
> which was a "Send-Receive-Terminal" made by DGM Electronics (Dennis
> Makovec, WA9CIY) which had a capabilities of sending and receiving Morse,
> Baudot, and ASCII.  Of course, I took it to sea along with a small 5 inch
> black and white television set and an RF video modulator for to convert the
> SRT-2000 video output to a TV signal on Channel 3 or 4, and I was all set
> to work RTTY as N1EA/MM.
>
> But that wasn't much fun, but it WAS different.  Probably not as confusing
> as using the ship's PHILLIPS STB-750A SITOR terminal to work AMTOR on the
> amateur bands and when someone accidentally sent Control D (for WRU - Who
> are you) and they received 10897 WAKL X which was the ship's Automatic
> Answer Back, but I digress.
>
> I also decided to use this as a code learning tool - even after sending
> and receiving Morse both as an amateur and commercial radiotelegrapher, and
> I was surprised that when I sent CQ it came out as NN TTET or NN MA or
> other variations.
>
> At first I thought it was the "darned SRT-2000" is a piece of junk but
> knowing the very high standards of quality - Miliitary Specifications - of
> this keyboard, I decided to "listen intently to hear MY deficiencies" - and
> swallowing the lump of pride in my throat, I finally started hearing the
> letters C as being sent NN or Q as MA, and I tried to improve my
> coordination, soon the DGM was decoding my bug as CQ.
>
> That's what I tried for - to have computer readable semi-automatic sent
> Morse! I have to say that I've received many compliments even from those
> whom I considered the best Vibroplex senders I had ever heard, and no doubt
> it was due to my using the code reader in the DGM SRT 2000 to nudge me into
> sending better.
>
> So while it was embarrassingly unpleasant to the point of my defiant
> refusal to admit my less than perfect sending was responsible for the
> errors I saw on the screen, when I admitted it was my timing that was the
> problem, and set out to change my timing and send perfect enough to have
> the code reader copy what I was sending, eventually with the outpouring of
> compliments, the pain of embarrassment stopped and my resolution to correct
> the timing errors in MY sending was rewarded with better - perhaps near
> perfect - sending, which was what I always wanted to do. It was a humbling
> experience though.
>
> One of the things I taught myself was to ALWAYS correctly correct an error
> - because it's good operating procedure -  but also because it's more work
> which makes ME pay attention to the quality of my sending.
>
> If I sent this: "I SENT LIKE TSIS" (Here I send 8 dots - the error signal)
> and repeat from the last correctly sent word, "I SENT LIKE THIS" (and
> continued onward!)
>
> 73
> DR
> N1EA
>
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