[Elecraft] OT: Decoding high speed CW

[Edward R Cole]

LD,

That is why it was so hard to pass the CW tests back in the 1950's 
taking before the FCC because the test did not have any real 
words.  The entire 5 minute code test was five random character 
groups, not all of which were letters or numbers and you had to have 
one minute perfect copy to pass.  I never managed to pass at the FCC 
in Detroit with the unsmiling stern FCC employees that looked like 
they were FBI ready to haul you off to Cuba or somewhere? ;-)

So imagine my pleasure taking my 13wpm at the Anchorage FCC office in 
1982 with happy friendly faces and copying samples of an actual QSO 
with real words and only having to answer seven multiple choice 
questions about the test correctly - absolutely no comparison with 
the CW "inquisition" of the 1950's.

BTW I did get to the point that I recognized common words like "CQ", 
"de", "73", "name", "RST", "QTH", etc.  They became words in the CW 
"language".  Too bad CW isn't sent in Latin; I took two years of that 
in HS <laughter>.
Only good that did me was understanding the priest at a Catholic Mass 
back in the days they still spoke in Latin.  Of course I can pick out 
a few words in Spanish and French and several other languages that 
have Latin base (like English) - <more laughter>.  Pretty hard to 
copy CW in Yupik Eskimo.

Good points about CW becoming a language.

73, Ed - KL7UW
dasvidaniya

---snip
That would explain why, for example, your copy speed will drop (sometimes
dramatically) when the content is blocks of random letter/number groups
instead of plain language, or if you're reading the mail on a QSO in another
language like Spanish or German (and you don't speak those languages).
---snip
73,
LS
W5QD



73, Ed - KL7UW
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