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AE4TA bigstones CD2CSP cdrsfrg gmajje ja8les jeny JerryHart K6PBF keiku kk4zfv KL5SL Maly Recall ryuchan test vk3stv

Hi,

I'm a total CW newbie and I just created an account here. I read the entire recent thread, "Having a hard time getting it" and learned quite a bit about the learning process here - very informative! However I still have 2 questions that I feel I need some light shed on before I know how to proceed:

1. I'm on lesson 1 and, like many, I found 20/10 too fast to start with; so I'm starting at 20/5. at 20/5 I get well over 90% (often 100%) but when I increase the speed it gets harder quickly. Should I stay at 20/5 and move on through the next lessons OR should I increase my speed on lesson 1 (to 20/10?) before going to lesson 2, etc?

2. When I speed up (or even sometimes at 20/5) I will often type an "M" and realize that I actually heard a "K" (or vice versa); then, on reflex, I back-space/delete it, but by then another letter or 2 goes by and I get totally derailed. The software then can't even evaluate my performance because there's the wrong number of letters. Should I just accept the "typo" as a wrong letter, even though I usually knew which letter it was and just hit the wrong key?

Thanks for any help anyone can offer!

73,

Bob

The problem with learning CW is perseverance. When you decide to learn CW, dependent on your age you have to reserve at least a month (8-16 years old) but usually a year of regular daily exercises for persons over 30 years old. That means a quarter of an hour exercising each, EACH EACH AND EVERY DAY.

When you look at "high scores" on this website under Koch exercises you find the scores of people with the number of exercises greater than default 50 in the last 30 days. May be 2 exercises of one minute average each day - that they are exercising. Only the people with 450 or larger number of exercises, are guaranteed exercising on the average 15 minutes each day.

4 (say four) meet this guarantee last month.

However, may be subscribers make exercises of longer time duration; 5 minutes is the max exercise duration, so may be they exercise in 30 days 90 exercises of 5 minutes and meet this quarter of an hour/day requirement. Adjust the default 50 in 100 - because 90 is not a possible choice on high scores - and you find that past 30 days exercising only 45 persons meet this minimum requirement.

What is 40 people on a world or even country (USA) population? Look at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-o9pwWUzz0
and you get an idea.

Are YOU going to join those 45 people?
(If not, I am wasting my time as in this kind of questions is the case in 99,6 % of the cases.)

Watch the speed, you will see the majority is exercising average 5 wpm effective speed.

So exercise with 20/5 or 15/5 not */10

When you try to do 20/10 and you are older than 16 years, you probably advance too slowly, get bored and frustrated and due to lack of perseverance in your character, you probably quit.

Subscribe (better not) to https://lcwo.net/usergroups/60
Read the (sub)forum there and conclude that age is not a compensation for youth due to increased perseverance.

Lost time, wasted time.

Does not matter, due to lacking perseverance the majority of people waste always their time, because everything must be fun, they live like apes.

So answer is: 20/5 or 20/lower than 5

Second part of your question:
Try to write on paper with a pen. Only one out of 10 exercises type the text over on the display
screen. That is because normally you do not have a typewriter available when decoding Morse code.
(Yes, considering part 1 of your question I suppose nobody is doing that)

When you mistype a character insert a space and directly after that the correct character. After finishing an exercise you are able to correct the spaces with their previous wrong character by omitting them, before submitting your corrected text.

Your challenge: Prove that you have perseverance, unlike most other people.

I started out on 20/10 but it was so fast that learning the code was taking longer. So, I switched to 10/5.

So far, from what I can tell, the first problem is getting the brain to recognize the dots and dashes. I do not think it is natural for most of us to pay so careful of attention to very slightly difference in length. Let alone we quickly fatigue and can lose focus.

I believe once you ear starts to hear the dot and the dash clearly the next stage if learning the pattern for the letter. So, I just leave the wrong letter typed most of the time. For me, it is more about getting that pattern of dots and dash encoded in my brain so I have to do very little thinking about what letter it is.

I find when I am first learning a letter I can end up having to listen very carefully to each dot or dash and then think okay which letter is it, but once I hear it for a while my brain starts to recognize the entire sequence as a whole and the amount of time it takes for me to press the key is reduced.

I think your experience is normal. You are just at that stage where your trying to reduce your latency. That is why you pick the wrong letter then quickly think of the right one.

A lot of times I may not get 5 letters per group. If I lose focus I just wait for the next letter and continue. If I hear a space then I go to the next group.

I think the more letters you learn the easier it will get because your brain will start to do some things automatically without much active thinking, therefore, reducing your reaction time.

It seems like the progress is (1) learn the code, (2) start hearing whole letters and less counting each dot and dash, then (3) slowly increase speed over time. And, you will likely do this at difference paces for difference letters. You might get to (3) for the very first letter you ever learn but some of the latest might be at (1) or (2).

This is a simple thought, but it works for me. Work at a level that is a challenge but not overly difficult. It will be more enjoyable and I think easier to stay with it. From what you said it sounds like that would be to continue the lessons at 20/5.

The program will train you more on characters that are missed, so if you can not correct them you will get more practice on those characters.

I don't believe that those that post on this forum to help others are ever wasting their time.
Even if that particular person does not stay with learning CW others read and are benefited by the experience and knowledge of others who are kind enough to offer help.

Thanks everyone for your helpful comments and advice. I lowered my speed further from 20/5 to 20/3 and now to 20/2. Pretty humbling but it sure beats banging my head on the wall at too high a speed. At this speed I'm now up to lesson 8; I'm getting well over 90% and 100% probably about half the time, but it doesn't feel easy and I want to get several close to 100% before moving on to the next lesson. Also I'm only doing 1 minute runs.

When people recommend 15 minutes per day does that mean logging 15 minutes total for the runs; as opposed to the time I spend at a session (which includes checking my scores, etc.)?

Thanks!

Hi bobolink,

For me too, slowing things down made all the difference in getting it. So for us it's just a matter of adjusting ourselves to the reality of actually learning this as we are able to. You're doing that. Stay the course.

From what I've read they mean equal to 15 1 minute runs. Also read if it's tiring break it down into different sessions. I stop when the mistakes start increasing and practice again later after a break.

If it seems crazy hard you might want to try lowering the character speed. I eventually did that. What I found was that I could start catching the sound at 16. Earlier in this thread 15 is suggested to try. I'm sure it would have been better if I had known to try that.

73,
Hope