[Elecraft] CW Decoding - Your Brain is best

[Larry Libsch]

         I respect the hams that have spent many hours developing and 
improving their CW skills ... until they attempt to discourage hams who 
choose to come at CW with a different approach. The conjecture that 
those of us using decoders cause more problems than those audibly 
decoding is just that - a conjecture. Inexperience is very likely a more 
important factor.   Please note that many accomplished CW ops use keyers 
when it's to their advantage - during CW contests.  Software-generated 
code has no "fist"and is therefore more readable.  And many CW 
contesters  can achieve higher speeds with accuracy using a keyer and 
software than they may be able to do by hand.

         Please note that the Elecraft team, among others, continues to 
work to improve the CW decoding capability of the K3. Wayne is offering  
a beta firmware version with improved CW decoding ability right now. Not 
liking software CW encoders and decoders is not going to make them go 
away. They are the future of CW. JT65 can decode inaudble signals now. 
The only question is when software will be better at decoding CW than 
the human brain.

        CW is for all hams. It doesn't belong just to a select group who 
learned how to key it by hand. If you want to limit your experience of 
ham radio by spending all your radio time learning CW, by all means do 
it. But there is so much else to explore in ham radio: RTTY, satellites, 
antennas, towers, DXing, contests, portable operation, equipment 
construction and much, much more. Use the available tools. Exploring 
this digital mode with software may make sense for you.

                                                             K4KGG, Larry