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

[Robert Harmon]

Robert,

Couple of suggestions for increasing your CW copying speed.

The Farnsworth method of CW training was the most beneficial to me.
With Farnsworth the characters are sent faster than the words.  For 
instance
at 10wpm each character is sent at 20wpm but enough time is added to 
slow down
the rate to 10wpm.  The ARRL adopted this method years ago for their 
morse code
training materials and the W1AW morse transmissions.  For example when 
W1AW is sending
at 18wpm the characters are sent at 20wpm.

Its great to get time in the saddle copying QSO's but to really increase 
your copying speed
you really need to spend some time exercising your copying abilities 
each day.
Practice copying "only" at speeds faster than you can comfortably copy.  
Practice at a speed
where you are only able to copy one or two characters in each word. 
Concentrate !!
Do this for only 10 minutes each day.  If you are really concentrating 
you will find
10 minutes is about when you are ready to throw in the towel for the day 
anyway  :-)
Later on after you find you are able to copy about half of the text then 
increase the speed back
to where you can only copy one or two characters in each word. (This 
isnt supposed to be easy this
is a training exercise.)   We wont increase our copying speed by copying 
the same easier speeds
all the time.  Try this only ten minutes a day and see what happens !

Also don't fret over losing a word or words in a conversation and losing 
the intelligibility of the
conversation,  that happens to all of us and will be remedied when you 
copying speed is increased.

my two cents
Bob
K6UJ







On 12/5/15 9:03 AM, Robert G Strickland wrote:
> I have used all the programs mentioned in this thread and have found 
> them all useful. I spend most of my practice time with Rufz, 
> occasionally going to Morse Runner. I'm not drawn to G4FON's program, 
> because there's no way to interact directly with the program as it 
> generates code [as with Rufz]. Focusing on Rufz, my initial post 
> basically asks about a comparison between starting at the target speed 
> and working down or at a slower speed and working up.
>
> I'm quick to acknowledge that all methods/approaches presume that one 
> puts in the practice time to become proficient. If one wants to 
> increase cw proficiency, then spend a lot of time in cw qso's. No free 
> lunches. Recently, when working at the computer on business, I tune in 
> a cw qso and just let it go on "at the back of my attention" as I 
> work. This seems to be having some positive effect.
>
> What I personally find happening - I'm 75y/o - is that in higher speed 
> qso's I start slowly lagging behind the sender until I miss a 
> word/words that breaks the intelligibility of the conversation. 
> Frustrating! Another point, I think that copying call signs at high 
> speed is more demanding in that one doesn't have the conversation 
> stream/meaning to help fill in for missed words.
>
> ...robert
>
> On 12/5/2015 03:21, Robert G Strickland wrote:
>> 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
>