[Elecraft] Farnsworth CW

Wed Oct 29 18:20:59 2003

While I no doubt respect the experienced opinion of Ron I also respectfully
disagree.

I have my reasons for disagreeing with him, but my inferior experience would
make them easy to refute as naive.

What I would like to know is how many other experienced CW ops agree with him
and why.

dt
.

--- Ron D'Eau Claire <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> After working a lot of ops who learned with the Farnsworth system, I've
> found that I am no fan of the system and never recommend it to someone who
> wants to be able to send good CW over a range of speeds with minimum
> frustration. 
> 
> The Farnsworth system seems to have been FB for getting people ready to pass
> the CW tests more quickly, but it doesn't prepare many ops for real CW on
> the air. 
> 
> CW has a rhythm that is based on the length of each element and the various
> spaces between them, including the words and letters. There are very
> specific ratios involved that Farnsworth ignores and the students don't
> learn. 
> 
> Learning that rhythm is very important! I know several ops who had to learn
> CW twice. Once with the "Farnsworth" method with un-naturally long
> inter-character spaces and high character speeds, and again with the proper
> rhythm to have actual QSO's on the air.
> 
> To me, listening to someone using Farnsworth spacing is like hearing a band
> play a favorite piece of music at double-speed, stopping for a long pause at
> the end of each bar so the time it takes to finish the whole piece is the
> same as it would be if played properly. I find it jarring to hear,
> un-natural and often hard to follow. Also, since they never learned the
> proper intervals, if they speed up they start mashing characters together in
> a mess. With modern keyers the logic at least forces a minimum spaces but if
> they try to use a manual key the results are often comic, if not downright
> sorrowful. 
> 
> Maybe it took me longer than others today to get my 35 wpm Code Certificate,
> but I can deal with anyone from 5 WPM on up to at least 30 and I can send at
> any speed with ease and CORRECTLY. 
> 
> I take pride in that. But it's really tough when I run into someone who
> learned the Farnsworth way and they want me to spit out letters and leave
> un-natural spaces. I feel like those musicians I mentioned. It isn't fun and
> it's hard, not to mention bad "practice".
> 
> My recommendation is to start at whatever speed you can recognize letters...
> Five WPM or less is fine, and slowly increase your speed as your ability to
> recognize the letters improves.  But do it with the correct spacing and
> element lengths from the beginning so you only need to learn once. Listen to
> and emulate lots of CW sent with the proper spacing and cadence and emulate
> what you hear. Record yourself and see if it sounds the same. 
> 
> If, in time, you want to become a real "high speed" conversationalist on CW,
> you can learn to hear words instead of characters. That's easiest done over
> 20 WPM, I think. There are groups who enjoy working 30 or 40 or more WPM,
> but they are a TINY segment of the total CW population. It can be fun. I'm
> no "high speed" 40+ WPM op, but I enjoy a QSO at 25 or 30 WPM from time to
> time, and at those speeds I hear words as much as characters.  Keep in mind
> that almost every one of us starts out learning characters. After all, on
> the old commercial circuits CW ops were biological machines, duplicating
> exactly what we heard on paper, character-by-character. IF the message
> spelled SHIP "SIHP" we darn well put SIHP on paper. The operator might ask
> to confirm if something was sent and heard correctly, but never made
> changes. Of course, that's graphically demonstrated when the test is to send
> and copy five-letter code groups that are meaningless. That's what my
> commercial CW tests required. 
> 
> Just like a musical instrument, I recommend that you learn to play it
> properly from the beginning, and embellish and add to your skills after
> you've mastered the basics. And the basics include the proper timing over
> your whole range of speeds. 
> 
> There are those who quickly point out that it has been proven that the
> Farnsworth system will create a 35 WPM (or faster) op more quickly than
> working up your speed over time. That's probably true. I'm not disputing
> that. It is also true that some early radio and wireless systems used that
> approach to CW training. What is also true is that those circuits operated
> at ONE SPEED! Some companies even welded the weights on their bugs in place.
> The weight controlled the operator's sending speed. That way everyone had to
> work at exactly the same speed. Learning code was a matter of learning to
> send at the "company speed" in the shortest time. It seemed to me that was
> what made it popular in Ham circles. Ops wanted to get up to 5, 13 or 20 wpm
> to pass the tests in the shortest possible time. That was back when CW was
> required for ALL Ham licenses. Many of those ops never intended to touch a
> key again. 
> 
> That's like learning to drive a car at only 5 MPH. Once you do that, you
> can, indeed, drive. But you still have a LOT to learn if you get into a car
> on the roads where you must operate it properly at all different speeds. In
> spite of the latest "fashion" being Farnsworth, it's still just a fashion
> and not one that necessarily serves the needs of today's average Ham
> operators best. 
> 
> Ron AC7AC
> 
> 
> 
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