[Elecraft] Copying CW at high speeds (OT to Elecraft)

[Mike Morrow]

Discussions of Morse copying skills are nowadays addressed to casual amateur efforts where complete and accurate hard-copy output is seldom required.  Professional Morse skill was measured at the speed that the operator produced complete and accurate hard-copy.  An operator who head copies at 50 wpm but hard copies at 15 wpm was a 15 wpm operator.

In the history of Morse for military and commercial service, the ONLY valuable skill was producing accurate hard-copy of both plain language text and code groups.  The professional licenses for radiotelegraphy were the Third Class, Second Class, and First Class Radiotelegraph certificates.  The Third and Second Class licenses required the following:

PLAIN LANGUAGE (including common punctuation) - 20 wpm - Receive and send 100 consecutive characters (1 minute) without error in a 500 character (5 minute) text.
CODE GROUPS (5-character groups of letters and numbers) - 16 wpm - Receive and send 80 consecutive characters (1 minute) without error in a 400 character (5 minute) text.

Most candidates found that slow-speed code group receiving test to be the most difficult part.  (It took me three 200-mile trips to the Kansas City FCC office to finally pass.) All those mental skills that allow an operator to decipher entire words in plain language are of no help with code groups...there's no process of "hearing code groups".  There is also no possibility of reviewing copied text and context for needed obvious corrections.  Although it's not required for 16 wpm, operators skilled at high speed code groups develop an automatic "unthinking" response to actuate keys on the mill/keyboard as characters are heard.

The era of the professional commercial Morse operator essentially ended in July 1999 when maritime Morse operation ceased in the US.  In the same era the US military banned use of Morse, even going so far as eliminating it from MARS repeater IDs.

It was a great era with great operators.  A dear friend of mine (Al, W5KGM) was a professional Morse operator for airlines and in WWII Atlantic merchant ship convoys from 1937 to the 1970s.  He could do do everything commercial-quality at 60-wpm or better.  He became a silent key at age 102 last year...there aren't many such "real" Morse professionals left.

It's unfortunate that the ham bands have been since 1999 the only place that Morse radiotelegraphy may be heard for practice.  Before that, the marine Morse bands (especially 400 to 520 kHz) provided far more interesting copy for development of Morse reception skill.  (I usually kept a receiver on 500 kHz/600 meters at night.)  Morse skill was also reinforced (at least for a while) in the Cold War for radiomen in my squadron of ballistic missile submarines on the logical consideration that if world events ever provoked missile launch, it was unlikely that normal sophisticated submarine communications networks would exist afterwards.

But today...Morse is only a hobbyist's or historian's undertaking.  I personally found practice at Morse reception to be far more rewarding outside the ham bands...but that option no longer exists.

Mike / KK5F