DD5RK:
Hi Cris,
thank you very much for your answer and effort. The article
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1417382?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents
is very interesting and important for me.
Within 33 hours training for receiving the students reached 8-20 wpm, 7h were dedicated for transmitting.
This is military training for hear and type - wartime, not Ham hobby time
8 to 20 . . that factor of 2.5 is a huge leap in practical terms.
DD5RK:
The normal duration to reach 13 wpm is according to an analysis 160 h.
30 mins a day for a year
DD5RK:
The approach was to learn all 40 Characters in 7h.
Don't know what happened in the US, but in the UK the students
( wartime again )
were talking morse to each other in the pub afterwards
- so lots of training and group support
DD5RK:
In every hour the students had to learn 5,7 character, every 10,5 minutes an new character.
So there is difference to the method on lcwo, where in each lesson one new character is introduced.
. . . and not so much group support
DD5RK:
The students were trained with meaningful and nonsense text.
The initial learning test is very interesting, one should do this at the beginning of learning, whether it makes any sense to start Morse.
it's hobby time not work time
if you don't get above 10wpm then you've still helped to keep morse going.
I don't think morse will survive ( in the west anyway )
just because of high speed operators
and
10 wpm is enough to save lives if you are stuck somewhere
DD5RK:
Other results from this study, very short:
the grouping of similar or dissimilar characters is not important.
the speed of the individual character is not so important.
30 to 60 per cent in telegraphy schools fail. (how many on Lcwo give up?)
I guess about 90 % get fed up . . .
BUT
that's mainly due to not having realistic expectations
an incorrect view of their own aptitude
And
we don't know how many steel themselves and have a second attempt
DD5RK:
Now I will evaluate what was wrong with my learning approach. Up to now I spent 96 days some hours a day learning Morse, and I am far away from the results above.
73
Ruediger
Hints IMNSHO , YMMV
Lots of the advice here is from people bowling along at 35+wpm
Some of this will not be relevant to people who are going to top out at 20wpm ( OK QSO speed anyway )
eg. quite a bit of advise is about
speeding up your morse
how to get through the course as quickly as possible to 25 wpm
not wasting time learning slowly in the first place - go straight to "fast"
etc
The most important factor is - aptitude
The second is - how much do you actually want to learn morse ?
The third is - what speed will you be satisfied with ? i.e. is it within possibility
The forth is - how much time and effort will you actually spare ?
either/or - how much is it worth to you ?; how much do you just refuse to give up ?
There will be a few reasons why people "struggle".
My guess is that hearing is one of these - if you can't hear it then your neural network can't learn it.
So
- make sure you use an audio frequency which is good for your hearing
- decent headphones etc
Listen to lots of morse - try mp3 on your phone
When listening to morse - aim to get the first character for pitch, speed/timing etc and then see what happens with subsequant chars
good luck anyway
stick with it
let us know how you get on
cb