[Elecraft] CW Contest and Elecraft K3s decoder

[Ron D'Eau Claire]

Back when telegraphy was the most common way to pass traffic, either on wires or by wireless, many systems such as Western Union welded the weights on the semi-automatic keys for a dit speed of about 15 wpm and did not allow operators to use their own keys. That was based on long studies that showed traffic moved faster at slower speeds because slower speeds avoided mistakes, requests for "fills", etc. 

In the Army we stuck with 13 wpm on the CW nets for the same reason (ca. 1960). That's the speed the radio schools trained operators to use. Note that these messages were commonly 5-letter code groups that were meaningless until decoded, so accuracy was critical. It wasn't possible to spot a mistake like one can in plain language text. 

It sounds like today's Ham contesters are rediscovering the same thing. 

73, Ron AC7AC

-----Original Message-----
From: elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net [mailto:elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Bob McGraw K4TAX
Sent: Sunday, November 26, 2017 6:50 PM
To: elecraft at mailman.qth.net
Subject: Re: [Elecraft] CW Contest and Elecraft K3s decoder

Kevin et al;

I agree, in fact I'd suppose as the CW speed the number of competent operators decreases proportionally.    Now I'm not saying "contest at 5 WPM" but certainly there are more that can copy 15 WPM than 50 WPM. Just sayin'..........so for us slow folks and old folks.......QRS.

73

Bob, K4TAX