[Elecraft] Learning Morse Code

[Fred Jensen]

I'm fairly certain it's an individual thing. In head copy, it starts to 
sound like reading somewhere around 25 for me.  If I'm making record 
copy on a mill or keyboard at around 25-30, I'm not really aware of 
anything I am copying.  It seems to be a direct connection between ears 
and fingers, and I cannot tell you afterwards what I copied.  In my very 
brief 10 months as the "station kid" at a coastal marine station in the 
mid-50's, the Company tried to enforce an 18-20 WPM speed limit while in 
traffic, they believed that was the sweet spot in terms of overall 
throughput [circuit chatter usually ran faster].

Ted McElroy [SK] held [and may still hold] the record set in the 30's I 
think, at 76 WPM with text taken from a newspaper.  That he set the 
record is certain although some have said he may have had the chance to 
see the paper ahead of time.  He also won typing contests which were 
popular at the time.  What may be apocryphal is a rendition that the 
code began, he poured a cup of coffee and lit a cigarette, finally 
sitting down and starting to copy maybe 5 mins later, and continued 
typing for several minutes after the code stopped.

Code groups are said to be much harder than plain text ... the 2nd 
Telegraph in the 50's was 20 plain text and 16 groups.  For some reason, 
I find groups easier and less work, no idea why.  And, after close to 70 
years with Morse, I agree with Tom ... there are lots of ways to learn 
the code with varying efficiency for different people but they all work.

73,
Fred ["Skip"] K6DGW
Sparks NV DM09dn
Washoe County
K2 #4398
K3 #642
ex KX1 #697

On 12/28/2019 8:25 PM, Tom McCulloch wrote:
> I agree, we all learn by the method our Elmer taught us.  Mine was the 
> A,W,J method at 5 WPM.
>
> I've been a CW guys almost exclusively and found 15 wpm to be my 
> personal comfort zone...However I have a question for those higher 
> speed guys out there.  At what speed would you say you start hearing 
> complete words rather than the individual letters and as a result you 
> could pretty much copy in your head (Jim said he doesn't write 
> anything over 20 WPM).  To me that's aweome (also unachievable..hi)
>
> Thanks
>
> Tom WB2QDG
>
> K2 # 1103 (I think)
>