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k4rzr soilengreen Wertyuud quetzal84 F4DIA db8jo avk f5git ik6zde g8tmv arg DL9MN test

I am doing my lessons at 20wpm character speed and 10wpm effective speed. Is there any particular significance to the "real speed" displayed when I submit my lesson results?

I know the 10wpm effective speed sets my "thinking time" between letters and by progressively increasing the effective speed I get more reflexive in my responses to the code. So what additional meaning is the "real speed"? Any thoughts?

Hi Steve,

there are always several definitions of "speed" in Morse code. The most common one is the PARIS standard, which takes the word "PARIS" as a reference. Sending PARIS x times in one minute equals to x words per minute.

The PARIS standard is fairly accurate for text in most languages (English, French, German, ...), but when you use completely random characters like in the code groups, it doesn't do a good job. In the languages mentioned, the letter probability is well defined; E occurs much more often than Q. It's no surprise that Gerke (who improved the original Morse/Vail code) chose a single dit for the most common, and --.- for a very rare letter. Depending on the text sent, the PARIS speed may differ widely from the "real speed", which is simply the number of letters per minute.

Imagine your text happens to consist of zeros only. "00000 00000 00000 00000 00000". At "5wpm" this would take almost two minutes. Now what if the text consisted of Es only? "EEEEE EEEEE EEEEE EEEEE EEEEE" - that's a mere 30 seconds or so!

LCWO's implementation with Farnsworth speeds (i.e. effective speed different from letter speed) is not very accurate, to be honest. But even if it was, or if you'd just listen to completely random letter groups at a fixed speed, there'd be a difference to the "real" speed due to the different letter probabilities.

73
Fabian DJ1YFK

I've got my Koch exercise speed set to 20/9 and it's generally reporting something around 11 to 11.5 wpm when it checks the results. I guess the effective speed reported after each exercise is more accurate?

Yes, the "real" speed reported at the end should be very precise, because it does nothing but calculate how long the generated file actually was and calculates characters / time.

73
Fabian DJ1YFK

Thanks, Fabian. You are doing a great service to the amateur community!

Steve
K6IEA

Thanks. I don't feel quite so hopeless for having turned the speed so low now...

There does seem to be some trial-and-error in picking a setting that'll give you something challenging enough to be worthwhile, while still being attainable.

I now pay some attention to the actual speed reported after an exercise is checked, so that it doesn't get too far away from the speed at which I'm aiming. At one point I'd set the WPM to 12, but the figure reported at the end was nearer 16 or even 17, so it wasn't (I guess) too surprising that I was struggling. At present, setting the WPM to 9 gets me a reported speed somewhere between 12 and 14, which is probably fast enough to be useful (if I can ever get past lesson 3...). Setting WPM lower than 9 was counter-productive; my attempts were actually worse than at WPM 9 because I started dissecting each character into its component dots and dashes.

If I ever get past lesson 3 (I'm back on lesson 2 at present because my attempts at lesson 3 were getting worse and worse) I expect I'll need to adjust the WPM setting to keep the actual speed where I want it.

A thought... When the site records the result of a Koch lesson it'd be useful if it also recorded the actual WPM speed of that lesson rather than the WPM setting it was aiming at.