[Elecraft] [OT] increasing CW copy speed: practice slow -v- practice fast

Sat Dec 5 10:35:49 EST 2015

VE3NEA's freeware MorseRunner is an another popular program for building CW
speed. This is a "pileup" generator, where multiple calls come concurrently,
at varying speeds & tones, with background noise. 

http://www.dxatlas.com/MorseRunner/

There was an old Commodore "Dr. DX" program that I still have around here
somewhere that was an early version of this sort of function.

N6MJ claimed 10,223 QSOs as a single operator (two radio) in CQ WW CW at
ZF2MJ last month.  Dan says he trained for months with two laptops running
MorseRunner, one in each ear.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no8nGGa99cE

http://www.3830scores.com/showrumor.php?arg=Lwa6zEfymmyvJ

This was a remarkable performance.  > 10K QSOs as a single op?  That's an
average of 3 contacts a minute, for 48 hours.    He has a 10 minute spurt of
414 an hour.

Dan also won WRTC 2014 with his colleague KL9A.

73 de Dick, K6KR

-----Original Message-----
From: Elecraft [mailto:elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of
efortner
Sent: Saturday, December 5, 2015 07:13
To: 'Danny Higgins' <danny.higgins at keme.co.uk>; 'Robert G Strickland'
<rcrgs at verizon.net>; 'Elecraft' <elecraft at mailman.qth.net>
Subject: Re: [Elecraft] [OT] increasing CW copy speed: practice slow -v-
practice fast

There is a program called Ruftz (google it) and I think it is free that
sends call signs. You choose the speed you want to start at and start the
process. It sends a call sign and you type it In the box. If you get it
right it will increase the speed until you miss a character or number at
which point it will decrease the speed. It can probable send faster than
anyone on this list can copy.
Earl, K4KAY

-----Original Message-----
From: Elecraft [mailto:elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Danny
Higgins
Sent: Saturday, December 05, 2015 3:34 AM
To: 'Robert G Strickland'; 'Elecraft'
Subject: Re: [Elecraft] [OT] increasing CW copy speed: practice slow -v-
practice fast

Over 40 years ago I wrote a GWBASIC program that sent random 5 letter groups
of letters and/or numbers. Like the Farnsworth system (although we had never
heard of it before) it asked for a starting and a target speed and adjusted
the spacing between letters so that the characters were sent at the target
speed but the thinking time between characters was adjusted to give the
starting speed. If you then typed the characters as they were sent, the
spaces between characters would gradually decrease if you got it right, but
if you got it wrong the letter that was incorrect was given a higher
weighting so that it occurred more often. After a period of correct input,
the weighting would decrease and the speed would start to ramp up again.
This either gets your morse up to your typing speed, or in my case, my
typing up to my morse speed. Groups of letters could be enabled individually
so that someone just starting could begin with EISHTMO before adding
additional letters as proficiency increased.

Unfortunately GWBASIC died with the advent of Windows3 and other versions of
BASIC did not have the BEEP command that was used, but recently I have
rewritten the program in Python and it runs on a Raspberry Pi2 at least up
to 50 WPM.

Danny, G3XVR

-----Original Message-----
From: Elecraft [mailto:elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Robert
G Strickland
Sent: 05 December 2015 03:22
To: Elecraft
Subject: [Elecraft] [OT] increasing CW copy speed: practice slow -v-
practice fast

The following comments/questions focus on increasing CW copying speed, not
the task of initially learning the code. That said, there may be an overlap
between the two tasks.

W1AW starts its CW practice speeds fast and then slows down. Presumably, as
the speed get slower the mental demand lessens and copying becomes easier;
then, ease of copying starts occurring at higher speeds over time/trials.
>From my days studying animal learning, I remember significant research to
the effect that starting a new task in the easiest form [slow CW speed]
lessened/prevented errors and, by the end, resulted in quicker and more
accurate learning.

I tend to practice 3-letter groups at 35-40 wpm, 5-letter groups at
30-35 wpm, and 7-letter groups at 25-30 wpm [for better or worse]. This is
somewhat geared to DX contesting since call signs are not "words."

All that said, I'm starting to wonder if the animal study folks may have a
point. How about the reverse of the above approach. For example, start with
3-letter groups at an error free speed, slowing increasing speed as long as
the error rate stays under some value [5%, say]. Keep working at a given
speed until the error rate is reached, then increment. Proceed in this
fashion until a goal speed is reached. Then, repeat in the same fashion for
longer letter groups. The same approach could be used with numbers, complete
call signs, and sweepstakes type exchanges.

The general idea is to minimize the error rate so that only correct neural
networks are formed in the brain. These can be slowly stretched, perhaps
like increasing strength in weight training and increasing range of motion
after orthopedic surgery, all the time working at the edge to slowly
increase capacity. This might also be applicable to increasing the speed of
characters as in the Farnsworth method. I'm interested in what folks think.

...rober
--
Robert G Strickland, PhD ABPH - KE2WY
rcrgs at verizon.net.usa
Syracuse, New York, USA
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