No, I’m afraid that my old CW skills are very nearly useless, like speaking Middle English — fun, maybe, but few if any people to communicate with.

From the approximatley 1600 students a year we put through the school in the early ’90s, we train less than 100 per year now. A slowly diminishing skill, it still has importance and relevance in today’s high tech world.

I did morse for many years and could 25 WPM in my sleep while having two conversations. It’s a mental thing……….you can’t think about it, you must hear and react instantaneously……. If you think about what you heard, your already behind.

I haven’t done morse code for 25 year now and found a program the other day. I was scared to see how much I had forgotten, but when I did the 25 WPM test, it was like riding a bike. No problem……

I rather miss it.

This is an “SOS” — note the shorter character spacing after the last tap in the first “S” and the last tap in the “O” – this lets you know whether or not the character ended with a “dit” or a “dah”. A similar relationship exists for the last click/tap in a word.

Mike

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhsSgcsTMd4 (Jay Leno world-record texter vs. Morse operator)

–Matt
KB1QZK

Originally Posted By jbayI used to run CW traffic nets on 80 and 40 meters. Learning the basics of the code at the letter-level is useful to a point (and was certainly necessary when the speed testing exams consisted of random groups of letters and numbers) but for real-world proficiency and speed it’s best to try to quickly progress from the letter-at-a-time level to recognizing words. dah di di di dit dit — “the”…eventually, it becomes like working with a foreign language. You don’t “translate” what you’re hearing on the fly, you hear it just like somebody speaking to you in your first language.

alas, this is all only of nostalgic value now….

Pattern recognition definitely has (had?) it’s place and came naturally once you had mastered the code – especially with such things as routine skeds using Q & Zs, etc. However you have to be able to turn it off and revert to strictly letter-at-a-time, very accurate reflex response (when banging on a mill or taking down messages by hand) when doing high-speed commercial type work like copying long lists of characters (weather grids, shipping lists, etc.) , typing long messages in a foreign language you may not know (like with message code using cyrillic characters, etc.).
However you are correct in that proficiency with Morse remains little more than a skill of nostalgic value – sort of like being able to chip a beautiful arrowhead out of flint with on another piece of bone or stone – something to wonder at but of little practical use in the modern day (sigh).