[Elecraft] Bad fist

[Dudley Chapman]

Al,
    Here is an old trick taught to me by an Old Timer Navy CW operator.  One
of the drills he was taught for getting the rhythm of sending CW is to send
the phrase "Bens Best Bent Wire".  If sent like this, "BensBest Bent Wire",
it sounds like a military cadence.  If you tap your foot the beat should
come down on the first morse element of the capitalized letters like this,
"BeNsBeSt BeNt WiRe".  (ie. DAHditditdit dit DAHdit ditditdit.... etc.)
However, in the last word of the phrase, the downbeat is on the first dash
in W and in the R rather than on the first dit in those characters (W would
be like ditDAHDAH, rather than DITdahdah.  Try singing it with dits and dahs
while accenting the morse elements on the downbeat.  (To send it perfectly,
the Wi in Wire is run together like it's a single character).  I hope this
makes sense.  Its so much easier just to demonstrate it with a key.

Dudley - WA1X



Message: 14
Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 09:30:53 -0500
From: "AD5MA" <ad5ma at arrl.net>
Subject: Re: [Elecraft] Bad fist
To: "Elecraft Reflector" <elecraft at mailman.qth.net>
Message-ID: <00fb01c53ab5$3d2e8e40$0f02a8c0 at WorkGroup>
Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="iso-8859-1"

This is the sort of thing that worries me about working CW. I am all in
favor of practicing before going on the air but what is available out there
to do this? Is there a hardware device & software that I can connect a key
to that will send information to a PC to test if I'm sending correctly?

Al.