[Elecraft] CW

[Macy monkeys]

FWIW, I'd rather hear two signals willing to ragchew at 20 wpm than one contester at 40 wpm ;)

Happy New Year to all!

John K7FD

> On Dec 31, 2019, at 12:17 PM, Frederick Dwight <kl7cw at mtaonline.net> wrote:
> 
> N6IET has some good insights.  For sure some methods of learning code are more efficient than others.
> For example, sending letters at a high speed, but leaving more space, or not memorizing the letters 
> from a chart.  HOWEVER many of us did everything wrong and still progressed to high speeds in spite
> of these transgressions.  For example, about 69 years ago a neighbor kid and I strung wires between
> our houses.  We made up our own code, some common letters had many dots and dashes and other
> seldom used letters had only a dot or two.  We also memorized the chart.  However we became
> moderately successful in this strange code.  Perhaps 5 years later we entered the Boy Scouts and once
> again memorized the Morse code and passed the tests.  For a short time we could converse in either
> code, but he never moved on to ham radio.  I was the school sponsor of a HS radio club, and one field
> day we did not have enough operating positions, so no problem, some of us just climbed up into a few
> nearby hills and had QSOs with each other and our hacked flashlights at perhaps 12 WPM.  Most of
> the kids had no problem adapting to the light signals and most had zero experience with light.  Several
> times in my 65 year ham career I started learning to read American Morse (the landline code) on a
> sounder, which was easy, but never followed through with this, but even without practice I can still read the sounder
> at least at 18 WPM with “our” Continental Morse code.  The brain is an amazing organ and capable of much
> more than we often realize.  However there are no real shortcuts, so hundreds of hours of operation
> is required for moderate speeds, and many hundreds or perhaps thousands of hours are required
> to become proficient at “HIGH speeds”, which I will call over 45 WPM. Some folks will not be successful
> at speeds more than about 35WPM, but these speeds were seldom required, even when I operated 
> as a shipboard CW op, and also as a land based coastal CW op where most traffic was at 20 WPM or
> less, and seldom over 25WPM.  Rick  KL7CW  
> 
> Sent from Mail for Windows 10
> 
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