[Elecraft] OT: Decoding high speed CW

[Jim Sheldon]

Peter,
None of the decoders out there, including the better ones (internal to 
the K3/K3S and the KX3) decode CW even close to accurately unless the 
conditions are ideal and the sending operator is close to perfect in 
his/her sending so the ultimate answer is "suck it up" and learn to 
decode it in your head.

If you rely on the decoders, you will have difficulty in actually 
learning to copy in your head and you will get enough call signs wrong 
in your contest logs that they could even be rejected due to too many 
"busted" calls.

That being said, as for the decoders, I was a Morse Intercept Operator 
during the first 6 years of my 20 year Army Security Agency career.  I 
had the copying of Morse code drummed into my head 8 hours a day, but 
that was copying mostly 5 letter or number coded groups on a typewriter. 
  It took a large amount of money to train us electronic spies, and the 
NSA decided to design a decoder to replace us, figuring that a computer 
could do a better job.  They spent several millions of dollars on this 
electronic black box (back in the 60's) and discovered that the human 
brain was a much better decoder than a machine could ever be.  Every 
little static burst would disrupt the decoding and it would take a few 
characters to catch back up.  Also, if the code wasn't being sent by 
automatic means (in those days that was a punched paper tape) and the 
receiving conditions weren't very close to perfect (almost never happens 
these days and even worse back then) the decoder output gibberish.  
After a couple years of mostly abject failures and after spending 
millions of dollars, they abandoned the project.

Wayne and others have done a marvelous job of computer coding, allowing 
the firmware in Elecraft's radios (and other stand-alone devices) to 
decode CW, but the above conditions apply to them as well as to NSA and 
NSA spent a heck of a lot more money trying to achieve perfect copy than 
Elecraft had in their coffers.  Bottom line, use it for occasional help, 
but work at learning to read it in your head yourself.  It isn't as hard 
as most people make it out to be and all it takes is practice.  That's 
the absolute bottom line, it takes practice.  If you are willing to go 
the extra mile and put in that practice, the rewards will outweigh the 
initial frustrations.

73 and good luck,
Jim Sheldon - W0EB

------ Original Message ------
From: "Peter Pauly" <ppauly at gmail.com>
To: "Elecraft Reflector" <elecraft at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: 3/28/2016 7:14:49 AM
Subject: [Elecraft] OT: Decoding high speed CW

>I became enamoured with N1MM+ after this weekend's contest and wanted 
>to
>see if I can use it for other stuff like CW. I got the keying working 
>with
>my K3S so that's no problem. The issue is I can't decode 30 WPM CW in 
>my
>head. I need help.
>
>I've been using the K3 Util terminal for CW contests and that's worked 
>out
>well. I wanted to see if I can use both N1MM+ and K3 Util and share the 
>COM
>port with LP-Bridge, but apparently K3 Util doesn't work with 
>LP-Bridge. I
>also tried using FLDigi but the results weren't too great. It doesn't
>decode most of the time.
>
>Any suggestions (besides suck it up and learn to decode high speed in 
>my
>head)?
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