'Forget dot com, Americans making a dash for Morse code'

[David G4EBT]

An article in The Times yesterday caught my eye, headed 'Forget dot com, Americans are making a new dash for Morse code'.

It was quite a long article - about ten column inches, but the gist of it was that 'Amateur radio operators were once required to learn Morse code by the Federal Communications Commission, which licensed them, but this provision was dropped in the 1990s and the code was no longer a staple of maritime and military communications'.

'A few years ago a group of New York ham radio enthusiasts decided to address a glaring problem. “There were not enough Morse code operators on Long Island,” said Howard Bernstein, 70, a retired chemicals importer. The Long Island CW Club started a revival and now has 3,340 paid up members with an attendance of 90 a month. The Club has 75 Morse code tutors and offers 77 classes a week. Each February the ARRL stages a 48-hour contest. Between 2020 and 2022, the number of participants grew by 10% to 4,872'.

I was also covered on the 'PM' programme on BBC Radio 4 yesterday, and for the next 29 days, can be heard at this link, where Howard Bernstein was interviewed. That segment of the programme starts at 51 minutes in:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001h638

At 54 mins he sends 'good afternoon' at 24 WPM (on an electronic keyer) which sounded fine, but then when asked to send it slower he just sent 'good' but to my ears, the 'd' ('dah-di-dit') sounded like 'dah-dit dit' (n e). Harder for an accomplished operator to send slow than fast?

I guess that SOTA ('Summits On The Air') will be pleased about the coverage.

2nd March this year will be the 20th anniversary of SOTA being founded, and it seems to be going strong:

https://www.sota.org.uk/About

Hope that might be of interest.

[Keith]

Hi David,

Yes, apparently it was "International learn your name in morse code day"! Quite an interesting interview.

Also, on Radio Shropshire, there was an interview with Martyn (G3UKV) who does the RSGB Morse practice sessions on Thursday mornings at 9:00 on 3605kHz. You can hear it here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0dqqqmk at about 52 minutes into the programme.

[Bazz4CQJ]

I'm following a thread on another forum, a chap has just got his Foundation licence and is thrilled to be working all over the place (e.g. the Ukraine) using a modest aerial on 20m and 10W of FS8 mode (?) From what I hear, these contacts are much like "contest QSO's"

It's not at all my cup of tea, but I suspect that young people will find that more appealing than CW.

B

[G6Tanuki]

FT8 mode: https://www.essexham.co.uk/ft8-basics-explained

A bit like the old 1980s/1990s Packet Radio. The PC does all the decoding/encoding/retransmissions. Like you say, it's very much like contesting - most of what gets exchanged is what I would class as "Protocol" rather than content.

Far more interesting to me is the "Reverse Beacon" network - https://www.reversebeacon.net/ - where you can call CQ using CW and get evidence that your signals are being received at remote, unmanned locations. Great for antenna- and propagation-testing.

[Phil__G]

Personally I think its a shame it was dropped from the class-A license, what I like about morse is that it can be used to communicate via absolutely anything that can be in two states, be that light, sound, movement, RF... in some dystopian future (another extinction event, nuclear MAD, zombie apocalypse etc) it may well be the only communications mode available to us
Cheers
Phil G4PHL

[Keith]

CORRECTION - Martyn's piece on Radio Shropshire actually starts at about 12 minutes into the programme and not 52 as I posted. Apologies.

[GMB]

Originally Posted by David G4EBT

...but then when asked to send it slower he just sent 'good' but to my ears, the 'd' ('dah-di-dit') sounded like 'dah-dit dit' (n e). Harder for an accomplished operator to send slow than fast?

The classic mistake is to assume that to slow Morse down you just play it slower. The difficulty with fast Morse is the symbol rate, not the "bit rate". Slowing the "bit rate" makes it hard to recognise the letters because you cannot read Morse until you hear each letter as a single unit. After years of experience you start to recognise whole words as a unit and this is where the ability to read at a high rate comes from (just like reading written text).

The big snag with Morse is that there are a lot of people who use it a lot and seem to loose the ability to slow down for those of us who don't, especially in contests where I think there is too much use of computers.

[G6Tanuki]

Originally Posted by GMB

The difficulty with fast Morse is the symbol rate, not the "bit rate". Slowing the "bit rate" makes it hard to recognise the letters because you cannot read Morse until you hear each letter as a single unit. After years of experience you start to recognise whole words as a unit and this is where the ability to read at a high rate comes from (just like reading written text).

Yes, when I was trying [and failing] to learn Morse, the recommended approach was to set the random-letter/number-generator[1] to send the characters at 12WPM or higher, but the 'speed' of the data was reduced by increasing the inter-character gap to give you extra mental-CPU-cycles to decode what it has just heard.

Individual letters sent at 12WPM, actual data-rate 3 or 4WPM to start. Then you shorten the inter-letter gaps as you get better.

You learn to recognise the rhythm of each character as a single entity rather than listening for and counting the individual dots and dashes.

I think it's sometimes known as the "Candler method" and was developed to train military telegraphists during WWII>


[1]Five-letter/number groups; using randomness here rather than sending words stops you from mentally-anticipating the 'next letter' and getting it wrong.

[Jon_G4MDC]

Those random 5 letter groups were a menace.

Iende dupwr itinge veryt hingd ownth atway and it took ages to undo the habit and copy word gaps.

[GMB]

Originally Posted by G6Tanuki

...I think it's sometimes known as the "Candler method" and was developed to train military telegraphists during WWII>

I encountered it as the Koch method which is what I used to learn.

[G6Tanuki]

Originally Posted by Jon_G4MDC

Those random 5 letter groups were a menace.

Iende dupwr itinge veryt hingd ownth atway and it took ages to undo the habit and copy word gaps.

The 5-letter-groups training approach did at least mean the same training materials could be used to teach people who may use the Western code conventions but whose native-language was not English.

I remember visiting West Germany back in the Cold War days and listening to people who were professionally trained to read "Martian Morse" - the Russian Cyrillic Alphabet version. For fun they would occasionally fire up a transmitter or two and hold ham-radio style QSOs on top of DDR/Soviet military channels...

[Jon_G4MDC]

I think it came from the numbers stations - always 5 character groups.
Sechs Sieben Acht Neugen Funf?

I had been listening to those for years and the rhythm was already set in there.
I think the morse trainer (a Datong in my case) just reinforced it.

My dear tutor, Len G3WER, fed me many Tunnocks biscuits until eventually I managed to break the habit.

[Dave757]

Hi,

You can still listen to those dreaded 5 letter/ figure/ punctuation groups in morse
on French station FAV22 on 3881 kHz and 6825 kHz.

That's if you are masochistic enough!. For me I just listen to it in the background
whilst trying to regain some semblance of being able to read morse at a reasonable
speed. I really should have used morse after passing the test in the early 80's.

Kind regards
Dave
G0ELJ

[Buzby123]

Originally Posted by Phil__G

... what I like about morse is that it can be used to communicate via absolutely anything that can be in two states, be that light, sound, movement, RF ...

OT : Here is a mobile phone flashing Morse to a micro driving some LEDs.

This demo was after various attempts that didn't use Morse, but the availability of Morse apps on phones made it so much easier, as no need to write your own app.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-UddZxMWNw

[Graham G3ZVT]

Originally Posted by Jon_G4MDC

My dear tutor, Len G3WER, fed me many Tunnocks biscuits until eventually I managed to break the habit.

Whenever I get my fist on a key, I invariably lapse into sending BEST BENT WIRE. I suspect it was a traditional RAF exercise, as that's where my friend and mentor did his National Service.

To anyone who might be temped to learn Morse from scratch, do not start by learning A and finish at Z, you will find yourself mentally reciting the alphabet in Morse to reach the code you have just heard, thus missing several subsequent characters.

Start with exercises that contain only dots, then only dashes, then move on to those with mixed dots and dashes in similar pattens. something like this.

EISH
TMO
NDB
AUV
WG
YQ
KR
PX
LF
ZJC

[David G4EBT]

For those who might want to learn Morse or improve their receiving and/or sending proficiency, Ray Burlingame-Gof, G4FON, devised his Koch method Morse trainer program in 2002. It’s now on its 10th edition, having been refined over the years on the basis of feedback from users. Version 10.8.1 was released in March 2021 and can be downloaded at the link below, where you can also listen to a 40-minute illustrated talk he gave at the 2018 RSGB Convention:

http://g4fon.net/CW%20Trainer2.php

He makes the point, which is well known and widely accepted, (as in this thread), that 'slow Morse', (as in slowing down the overall speed) is of little use as the rhythm is lost. If we think of Morse code as a 'language', no-one ever learnt a language by slowing down the speed at which words are spoken - we build up a vocabulary. So with his program you can, for example, set the speed of the characters at 20WPM, and slow down the effective speed to 12WPM. (Not in five-letter groups, but random length groups, as occurs in plain language).

Hope that's of interest.

[Jon_G4MDC]

I rather liked this one at one time.
I haven't used it in a long while. I hope it still works. I just remembered where it was...

https://www.f8eho.net/content/about-ehocw

It looks like it will do auto QSO. I don't think I would use that but the fact it can send plain text from files is quite nice.

[kellys_eye]

My first morse learning class was "here's the alphabet, learn it by the next lesson or you're out".

True to his word, the lecturer threw out all those (not me!) who couldn't write the whole alphabet down at the next class lesson. Some didn't believe his original threat and some just had trouble learning it!

The last time I was heavily involved was sending (hand key only) morse at 50+wpm to a student who wanted to see how good he was at receiving......

Even now, 40+ years later, I can still read code at 30wpm without breaking a sweat and I can, with practise, break the 48wpm barrier.

When listening on the ham bands I only ever 'tune in' to CW transmissions - SSB etc doesn't really interest me. I was disappointed when they dropped it as a requirement for Class-A licences - the start of the 'dumbing down' process if you ask me.

[Jon_G4MDC]

Another thing about EhoCW that I had long forgotten.
It can output .wav and .mp3 files of anything you like.

Now my phone rings again with "QTC" just like it did back in the 1990s.

[SiriusHardware]

I decided to have Morse as the ringtone for my Galaxy S3 as well, as I can't bear to hear tinny, unrecognisable music blasting out from 1cm speakers and I wouldn't want to inflict it on anyone else.

However I'm a rather private person so I didn't want the Morse to contain anything which would identify me (so not my callsign or real name for example). I eventually generated a ringtone which sends out 'The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy sleeping dog' over and over again at a brisk speed for about two minutes. To non Morse readers it probably sounds like the urgent sort of morse you'd hear at a dramatic moment in a WWII film, perhaps when the enemy has just been sighted. It's at quite a high WPM rate so I expect it would need someone like kellys_eye to read it and I doubt that there are very many like him around now.

I recorded it at a number of different tone frequencies and selected the one which hit the resonant sweet spot of the phone speakers - not to annoy others, but because I am quite deaf and -I- need to be able to hear it when it does ring.

And that, and identifying unknown amateur repeaters, is the sole extent of my use of Morse these days, despite having passed the Morse 12WPM test when it was a requirement for access to HF.