[Elecraft] Hearing CW - Fundamental Keying Waveform?

[N2EY at aol.com]

In a message dated 9/20/06 6:29:25 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
kc0ukk at msosborn.com writes:


> My conscious brain only reports differences, not absolutes. 

How can that be, assuming you were able to learn to read and write, speak and 
understand speech? 


 The
> 
> result is that 'dash dash dot dash' is heard as 'something something
> change something'.  That's exactly the same as 'dot dot dash dot' is
> heard.
> 

I see a clue. 

If you are hearing individual dots and dashes as separate elements, you're 
probably listening to code charaters that are too slow for you.

We don't teach babies to talk and understand speech by speaking v-e-r-y 
s-l-ow-ly. We don't expect them to hear "cat" as 'consonant k sound'......'short 
vowel a sound'.....'consonant t sound'. Instead they hear "cat" as a unit, even 
though it has three parts. 

What we *do* when teaching speech is to separate the words clearly. 
"The......cat........is.......on.....the.......mat'. So there's lots of 
recognition/process time and the words are clearly separated. And we start with a very small 
vocabulary, then build on it. 

The same principle applies to learning Morse Code via the Koch/Farnsworth 
method. 

Consider the following thought-experiment:

Suppose you had the task of listening to a series of common words spoken 
clearly and distinctly. And after each word, you were expected to write down the 
last letter of the word.  Would that be difficult?

Receiving Morse Code is basically the same thing except that the words are 
replaced by a series of short and long sounds.

73 de Jim, N2EY