[NJARC] Good Story from Page 1 of Monday's Wall Street Journal
michael s christiansen
kb2vrm at juno.com
Wed Oct 10 22:45:50 EDT 2007
Hey Scott, that's cool. If that's the route you want to go to learn the
code more power to you but there are lots of computer programs available
for free on line and probably from some of our club members also that are
very good. Mike Christiansen, KB2VRM
On Wed, 10 Oct 2007 16:37:36 -0700 (PDT) Scott Roberts
<ng19delta at yahoo.com> writes:
> Visit our web site - See http://www.njarc.org
> _______________________________________________
> That's Great! I am trying to teach myself Morse,
> albeit slowly at the moment. I have a jury-rigged
> trainer- a radio shack piezo buzzer, 9vt battery and
> key. Works well, and sounds real. Just have to start
> following my directions from the 1944 CAP cadet
> manual! lol I want to be able to CW when I get my
> license and ham shack setup.
>
> Scott
>
>
> --- john ruccolo <jr6v6gt at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > Visit our web site - See http://www.njarc.org
> > _______________________________________________
> > Tapped out? Arizona retiree aims to write new
> > chapter
> > for Morse code
> >
> > NOSTALGIC FOR SIMPLER days, retired
> > astrophysicist Chuck Adams is
> > translating classics of boys’ literature into a
> > language he fears is going the
> > way of kit radios and marbles: Morse code.
> > Holed up in his high-desert home crammed
> > with
> > computers, radio receivers
> > and a very patient wife, Mr. Adams uses homemade
> > software to download online
> > books with expired copyrights, convert the typed
> > words
> > into Morse code tones and
> > record them on compact discs he sells on the
> > Internet.
> > So far, Mr. Adams says he has sold or
> > donated
> > thousands of Morse
> > versions of such novels as Edgar Rice Burroughs’s
> > “At
> > the Earth’s Core,” Daniel
> > Defoe’s “Robinson Crusoe,” and H.G. Wells’s “The
> > Time
> > Machine.” In about an hour
> > his software can take any book in the public domain
> > and turn it into a string of
> > digital dits and dahs; last weekend, he turned out a
> > version of F. Scott
> > Fitzgerald’s - .... . / -... . .- ..- - .. ..-. ..-
> > .-.. / .- -. -.. / -.. .- --
> > -. . -.. (a.k.a., “The Beautiful and Damned”).
> > For the 65-year-old Mr. Adams, it is a labor
> > of love, mixed with equal
> > parts hope and despair. “Morse code is going to die
> > off unless you can talk
> > someone into coming into the hobby,” he says.
> > “I do it because it’s fun, and to keep it
> > going,” he says. Then he adds
> > in the next breath: “But I have no delusions of
> > grandeur that I can save Morse
> > code from extinction. I’m not Don Quixote. I’m not
> > going to go out and fight
> > windmills.”
> > Mr. Adams grew up in Wink, a blink of a town
> > in West Texas. About two
> > meters tall himself, he shared a small bedroom with
> > his three younger brothers,
> > each of whom is even taller. He hand-built his first
> > bike with parts from a
> > junkyard and flew model rockets high above Wink
> > while
> > the Soviets flew Sputnik
> > even higher.
> > And, at the age of 15—inspired by his
> > father,
> > a ham-radio operator—Mr.
> > Adams taught himself Morse code from a book. At the
> > time, ham operators had to
> > transcribe Morse code at a rate of five words per
> > minute in order to earn the
> > most basic federal license. Soon young Mr. Adams was
> > spending every night
> > sending coded messages to anyone who could hear
> > them,
> > and eavesdropping on UPI
> > news dispatches broadcast to ships.
> > Many other radio amateurs use voice
> > transmissions, but Mr. Adams
> > preferred code, because of the challenge—and because
> > he thinks his voice is too
> > high and his West Texas accent too twangy.
> > Mr. Adams completed a Ph.D., won tenure at
> > the
> > University of North
> > Texas, worked high-powered jobs in the defense and
> > computer industries, and
> > dabbled in the professional poker circuit. But he
> > never lost his love for Morse
> > code.
> > The code is the creation of a painter,
> > Samuel
> > F.B. Morse, who needed a
> > way to transmit messages over the telegraph that he
> > and Alfred Vail had
> > invented. In 1844, the men famously sent a
> > transmission from Washington to
> > Baltimore that read, “What hath God wrought?”
> > The telegraph soon replaced the pony
> > express.
> > As late as World War II,
> > ham operators found themselves using their Morse
> > skills as radiomen in the
> > military. During the Vietnam War, Jeremiah Denton, a
> > prisoner of war who later
> > became a U.S. senator from Alabama, blinked
> > “T-O-R-T-U-R-E” in Morse code when
> > his captors put him on television.
> > But over time, the telephone and satellites
> > have rendered Morse code
> > almost obsolete. “If the satellites go out and power
> > goes out, Morse code can
> > still get through,” says Nancy Kott, president of a
> > code club called
> > FISTS—someone who sends good code has “a good fist.”
> > “All we need is a battery
> > and two wires to tap together, and we can
> > communicate.”
> > In February, the Federal Communications
> > Commission eliminated the Morse
> > requirements for ham-radio licenses. Mr. Adams
> > resigned from a ham-operators
> > organization because of what he saw as its flaccid
> > defense of Morse code.
> > “It is a sad state of affairs when the U.S.
> > doesn’t even attempt to keep
> > the language alive or give an incentive to work on
> > it,” says Mr. Adams.
> > Many of those who still know Morse code test
> > their skills with a German
> > computer game called Rufz, the standard for
> > determining world
> > transcription-speed rankings. Players listen to
> > coded,
> > five-character call
> > signs, combinations of letters, symbols and numbers
> > that identify individual
> > license holders. The faster and more correctly they
> > type them, the more points
> > they score. (Transcribing regular text is much
> > slower.)
> > Last month in Belgrade, Goran Hajosevic
> > broke
> > 200 words per minute—an
> > extraordinary pace. Mr. Adams is tied for eighth in
> > the world, at more than 140
> > words per minute.
> > Scanning the list recently of the 60 fastest
> > Morse coders under the age
> > of 20, Mr. Adams spotted just two with
> > American-issued
> > call signs. “What this
> > shows me is in the United States, we have no one
> > who’s
> > interested in learning
> > Morse code anymore,” he lamented.
> > Mr. Adams and other Morse aficionados don’t
> > speak of dots and dashes;
> > that imagery is too visual, and Morse is an aural
> > language. So they prefer to
> > describe the language in dits and dahs, the sounds
> > of
> > the short and long tones.
> > A, for instance, is dit dah. B is dah dit dit dit,
> > or
> > simply dah dididit.
> > Between two letters, the sender allows a three-dit
> > silence. Between words it
> > grows to seven dits.
> > Like all Morse experts, Mr. Adams rarely
> > breaks signals down into
> > letters, instead hearing complete words much as
> > readers recognize words on a
> > page. When he transcribes a message at high speeds,
> > his fingers are five or 10
> > words behind his ears. When he is “in the zone” he
> > isn’t even conscious of what
> > he is transcribing, he says. He has to read it later
> > to understand the message.
> > When he listens to one of his books, the
> > code
> > is like a voice speaking
> > to him. “It’s like you don’t count the i’s when
> > someone says Mississippi,” he
> > explains.
> > He produces his audio books to play at
> > different speeds, depending on
> > the expertise of the buyer. Ken Moorman’s bedtime
> > listening is Mr. Adams’s
> > 25-word-per-minute version of “The War of the
> > Worlds,”
> > which he purchased for
> > $10.50. “It’s so much easier to pick up a microphone
> > and yell,” says Mr.
> > Moorman, a 65-year-old retired electrical engineer
> > in
> > Williamsburg, Virginia,
> > and a coder since 1957. “The people who do [Morse
> > code] today do it because it’s
> > a lost art.”
> > Earlier this year, Mr. Adams sent Barry
> > Kutner, a 50-year-old
> > ophthalmologist from Newtown, Pennsylvania, and
> > another world-class coder, a
> > 100-words-per-minute version of the book. To Mr.
> > Adams’s chagrin, Mr. Kutner
> > wrote an email back pointing out that the gap
> > between
> > words was eight dits long,
> > instead of the prescribed seven. At that pace, a dit
> > lasts 1.2 one-thousandths
> > of a second.
> > Much as he did growing up in Texas, Mr.
> > Adams
> > enjoys sitting in front of
> > a gray radio, not much bigger than a hardcover book,
> > and sending code with a
> > $500, Italian, stainless-steel, paddle-style key
> > that
> > he operates with a
> > pinching motion. With the slightest touch of his
> > right
> > thumb on one paddle, the
> > key sends an audible dit, or short tone. A touch of
> > his right pointer finger on
> > the other paddle sends a dah, or long tone.
> > His wife, Phyllis, 62, doesn’t begrudge him
> > his long hours in front of
> > the radio. “I’m just glad he has something to keep
> > him
> > busy,” she says. “All my
> > friends with retired husbands complain they follow
> > them around the house all
> > day.”
> > One recent Sunday morning, Mr. Adams’s radio
> > came alive with Morse
> > tones. It was a guy named Gary McClain in Pryor,
> > Oklahoma. The transmissions
> > were pretty slow, just 22 words per minute.
> > Mr. McClain, a 65-year-old retired mill
> > worker, learned Morse code in
> > the Boy Scouts half a century ago. He had nothing
> > urgent in mind; he just wanted
> > to make contact with someone far away.
> > “Weather here is cloudy and chance of
> > showers,” he tapped, as Mr. Adams
> > transcribed the words in a notebook.
> > Mr. McClain signed off, and the radio went
> > silent. “It will eventually
> > die,” Mr. Adams mused. “I’ll hate to see it go. I
> > won’t have anybody to talk to.
> > I’ll have to go back to reading.”
> >
> > -end-
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
_________________________________________________________________________
___________
> > Moody friends. Drama queens. Your life? Nope! -
> > their life, your story. Play Sims Stories at Yahoo!
> > Games.
> > http://sims.yahoo.com/
> > _______________________________________________
> > NJARC mailing list
> > NJARC at mailman.qth.net
> > http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/njarc
> >
>
>
>
>
>
_________________________________________________________________________
___________
> Need a vacation? Get great deals
> to amazing places on Yahoo! Travel.
> http://travel.yahoo.com/
> _______________________________________________
> NJARC mailing list
> NJARC at mailman.qth.net
> http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/njarc
>
>
More information about the NJARC
mailing list