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6L5TRB ag6aq akionsmr87 BD3OIT BH4GUU Chrys DL5MJ dreamfly fujiki gabuchan green9 IZ1IGK JK1WCW K1KLF K1TOO K3yh katsu4284 KK6WJG kzfk ldl0909 LU2HYL luckytoshi123 M0TNM ofe oh9hdh oiso PA1CJ Rhag1128 rleblanc rlg seiz sgnurf swcollin test threefish

hello all:
I just started and found that I was at 100% on lesson 1 after a a short while. On to lesson 2 with the "u" introduced, where I have been for 2 days. I absolutely cannot keep up on the test at the default 20/10 speed. With the third letter introduced it seems like everything is going way too fast.
Is it OK to reduce the speed and then gradually increase it or is that counterproductive to eventual mastery?
Thanks for any info. I really want to learn this

Hello Joe,

congrats to your decision to learn Morse code.

Please note that commercial speed (e.g. for transfering was around 22 wpm.

No wonder you can't master 20 from day one.

As with learning a musical instrument you may just want to slow down in the beginning and increase speed later.

Any speed recommendations given here are personal - the one that best can jusge your learner's speed is you.

I think you find out that 20/10 is too fast for you intially - how about 8/8 and increase once things go smoother to, say, 10/10 or 12/12?

73

Gerd

OK, thank you very much. I will set it for slower, I just did not want to get in a hole with the slower speed. Thanks.

Hi Joe



Is this because you can't type that fast ?


What happens if you just say the letter out loud ?

You will find you have to keep listening for the next character whilst you are still decoding the current one . . .


** This "decode behind" in your head is just what you want to achieve . . .


Try this before you change the speed settings.

You need lots of decoding practice, not typing. repeat repeat repeat . .



Eventually . . . it becomes "automatic", so you may then find you just "hear" words - but still slightly after the event



Be careful not to ( learn to ) go directly from:-

sound of morse -> keyboard key - missing out the letter

else you will need to type everything out and read it back . . .





Good luck with progress . . .

Let us know how you get on . . .


cb

I guess the 2 main issues are I can't assimilate the code fast enough and I cannot write fast enough. I am trying to write the letters on papers and not typing them as I am not a good typest.

Hello Joe. Congratulations on starting your training. I am not a very successful student, but I can share my thoughts.
Try to keep the ratio of symbol speed to effective speed 2/1 or less. For example - 20/15 will be better than 20/10. If it's fast you can take 15/10. Such proportions will greatly facilitate your future learning. Try to write on paper, learn to write quickly. Typing on the keyboard is obviously convenient, but there is a danger of associating the sound with the key. Especially often it can be for those who do not know English well and rarely write in English.
Good luck!

snowfly - Joe Cadle
There are 2 ways to understand the issue.
#1 You ask other people for permission to do something.
#2 You give yourself permission to do something.
The person who chooses either 1 or 2 is you.
Also, there are 2 other. #1 Continue to study Morse Code in accordance with what others dictate. or #2 Continue to study Morse Code at a speed that allows you to grow.
If you confer authority upon other persons, you disempower yourself. If you confer authority upon yourself, you empower yourself.
There is a menu option on the left of your screen under "Account" and it is titled
"Change CW Settings"

To: Bruce R Bain
I was not asking anyone's permission to do a GD thing. I was seeking information from this well of experience ie I did not want to do something ( such as decreasing beginning speed ) that in the future would hamper further success. I appreciate the cordial replies I received and then I read yours with your pseudo-psychological BS which was not helpful at all. Your condescending attitude with all it's pompousness is very much resented and is far from being constructive.

Hi,

the original Koch method works with 12 wpm without extra spaces between letters and groups of 5.

Only the 5 letters of the alphabet were taught.

The students learned to copy the 26 letters in 24*0,5h = 12h with a speed of 12 wpm.

of course only the 26 letters of the alphabet were taught, no punctuation, no numbers, no umlauts.

snowfly - Joe Cadle
Sorry that you resent the information my friend. When I saw the messages about: "Is it OK to reduce the speed...etc." and "Thanks for any info...etc." It was my intention to propose self-empowerment rather than self-disempowerment. Rather than being "Pseudo-Psychological BS" the information is something that my grandfather taught me as a child. I was taught that it is not always necessary to ask others if something is "okay". When the invitation is for "any info" I shared what is intended to assist you. I apologize if anything I wrote was offensive. There's a good fellow.

WOW... Good answer Bruce. It's one to rememember, and learn from. Respect...!

73 de OZ1SPS

Hi Joe,

When I started, I tried all different things. Different characters per minute, different words per minute, then different tones. Like you, I didn't want to learn at a slow rate, then find out that I need to relearn all this stuff at a faster rate.

Like other's have said, it ends up being what your brain needs. For me, I'm learning at 20/5. It feels like I'm learning the character as a whole sound, but then each letter of the word is a tad bit slower so my brain can catch up. I've found that if I have the characters per minute slower, then I find myself repeating da-dit-da etc in my head instead of hearing the character as a whole.

Also, I write the letters in a notebook, then transfer to the screen for the lessons and word practice. (I started with all capitals, but I can't write that fast. So, I switched to lower-case cursive - that works for me.) I do the Morse Machine on the keyboard, obviously. Like others have said, I don't want to learn the keystrokes. I want my fingers to automatically write the letters on paper.

Take care,
Beth

Hello all,

I'm still learning too. Just to share my thoughts too.
I started from lesson 1 at about 20/8 in mid october and as AF0XB said, I was able to copy (on paper) but I was replaying the sounds in my head, so not very good.

As I plan to use only straight keys for now, I know that I won't TX at more than 12-13WPM so I started again to learn at the speed of 15/12. If you go on air, you will see, IMO that you can find quite a lot of stations at about that speed (I'm not speaking about key demons which are too fast for me HI).

I made that speed change on lesson 14 and it required me to stick on this lesson for about 12 days to reprocess what I've learnt.

Now, I'm at lesson 25 and everything seems to go fine. It's really nice because even though I've still 15 lessons to come, I can listen on air and decode already some callsigns, reports, small sentences (even you miss a letter because you don't know it yet, you can recompose the word easily).

Usually I need about 2-3 day per new letter to learn it, by doing beetween 10 to 20 lessons of 1min a day.

And as AF0XB, I write on paper, but in capital letters, I don't want to be the prisonner of a keyboard, even though I type really faster with a keyboard than with a paper.

Just my 50cents.

Greetings everyone,
I am really enjoying the lessons but am a little confused as the correct way to learn. One of the things holding me up is using the key board. I feel I need to go back and take typing lessons because I cant type out the letters fast enough or I spend to much time finding the letters, and Im only at 6 letters at this point. Does anyone else have this problem?
Another thing is I seem to have a much easier time remembering the sound of a letter at the speed of 30. If its at a slower speed, I find my mind trying to listen to each of the dots and dashes and it takes longer to learn a new letter.
It sounds kind of weird, but when learning the sound at a faster speed I can just about tell what the dits and dahs are if I had to then write them down. I have it set on 30 /10. I just cant type out the letters fast enough even though I know what the letter is. Is there a diff setting it should be on for a slow typer?

If I write it down as I hear it, I do a lot better but how can I go back and check to see if the letters are right or not?
Sure could use some advice. Either that or I guess I should take up typing lessons again. Its been years and I peck at the keys. Sure would like some input.
Thanks
DittDahh ha ha

Trish,

can you keep up copying at 30/10 when handwriting instead of typing into a keyboard?

73

Everyone who can't touch type has this problem - so some people slow down to match the typing speed . . .

If you aren't careful you MAY end up needing a keyboard ALL the time because you will have made a link between the morse and a key-press.

This is fine if you are a military operator, producing typed out coded messages.


It's probably not what you want if you are a HAM and hope to have QSOs without a WP to type into . . .



Better to write down the decode, and then enter after the event ( I know - its a chore, it takes more time . . . but )

If necessary - increase the gap BETWEEN groups . . . and then for each group of say 5 letters

listen/remember/decode/write down at the same time - using the inter group space to catch up with the decode/write down bits

This helps towards "head copying".



30 wpm char speed is OK if your hearing is up to it - but go for a speed which maximises your learning rate - which may be 30 wpm
but . .

eg. may well be better to learn at 20/20 or 25/25 than 30/10 if you could do so.

Speeding up will be easier (probably) - and you might find you can't manager 30/30 so easily . .

We don't know your natural aptitude - so we can only point out pit-falls ahead.





Write - then type.


Also - be careful of progressing too fast. You are ( probably ) aiming for an auotmatic reaction

- hear morse -> character pops into your head without you having to think about it.

This is different from having the characters in short term memory, which can stall midway.


Have you tried 30/30 with writing down ? You may well have high aptitude, but be wary of the short term memory.


Plenty of people stall at half way and give up


YMMV

good luck with it . .

Let us know how you are getting on

cb

cb
Thank you for the input.
I'll try some of the things you suggested. I really appreciate it. Will let you know what I find out.
DittDahh

Hi Gerd-
The answer is yes to writing it down, but Im trying to do it both ways -I try typing the letter out and then later to write them out.
Mostly writing at the point.
Typing seems it would be so much faster if I actually knew how to type but its been years and I peck at the keys and start looking at where the keys are and that throws me off. I may end up taking typing lessons-just maybe at this point.
Why do you ask? any suggestions?
Trish

I had a novice license 42 years ago and never progressed. Got married, children, ext. now I’m retired and I’m going to do this again!

Just started to learn code. I found this video on YouTube to be very good info. I’m taking his advice and it seems to be working.

https://youtu.be/UT973YhjdR4

Trish,

CW is - in my view - all about keeping things simple.

So if you can progress writing down by hand then why not do that and bother about typing later, if at all.

You also know roughly your mistakes, so there may not be a need to always transcript from hand-written copy to typing it into the LCWO web site.

Apart from that: handwriting copied CW text is also helping to learn and solidify your CW.

(That said: I learned typing some while back just for speed typing during CW training).

73 and enjoy CW

Gerd.

I noticed the ‘keyboard memory’ when today i trained with pen and paper insted of typing on keyboard. My accuracy fell immediately, and it took some time until I head 90% again (at level 16).

So I see now I should vary between keyboard and pen/paper while training. I dont re-type on keyboard, you get a very good feeling on how you did at least on my level

EDIT: Also changing from default 5 letters pr group to random (2-7) was very interesting, as I was "getting used to" the 5 every time. I think the "random" should be used from time to time as well...!

Hello snowfly!
I did a little research on learning CW (or a foreign language, too) and discovered that it is the SOUND that I am trying to get my brain to recognize, with NO INTERMEDIATE STEPS that will slow my response down.

In practice, a keyboard would slow me down, as does writing the character down in long hand. I can scoot along MUCH faster if I just say the character out loud, rather than write it down.

I adjusted my speed to learn the characters at 25 wpm, but play them at 7 wpm while learning (25/7 is the ratio).

There is no sacred ratio! Play around with your own ratio as you see fit, but remember if you learn characters at 8 wpm, you will have to relearn them at 20 wpm later!

I hope my experience can halp you!

Michael - wb6csh

Hello,
some good advice on the learning and training of Morse Code is found on the excellent website of
Kurt Zoglmann, AD0WE:

https://morsecode.ninja/advice/index.html

73
Tom

Hi,

from the link above:

"The Koch Method is a learning technique named after German psychologist Ludwig Koch. With this method, the full target speed is used, starting with just two letters. Once strings containing those two characters can be copied with 90% accuracy, an additional character is added. This step is repeated until the full character set is mastered."

"Koch Method:
The Koch Method is a learning technique named after German psychologist Ludwig Koch. With this method, the full target speed is used, starting with just two letters. Once strings containing those two characters can be copied with 90% accuracy, an additional character is added. This step is repeated until the full character set is mastered. Typically students start at 20wpm."

This is not true!

The speed Koch used was 12/12 and no Farnsworth.
He made research with 20wpm, but the speed overchallanged the students.

My personal meaning:
Be careful reading all the myths on internet.
Always look for the original documents and sources.


73
Rüdiger
DD5RK

Tom
I went to the website you listed by Kurt Zoglmann and you are right! Its a great learning method and he repeats everything 2X which helps in learning how to copy.
Still hanging in there finally found a speed that I think is helping me better at 25/15 and hope to speed up a little later.

73
Trish

Hello all !
As a really new CW op (14 CW QSO since a week), here is my thoughts :

I'm learning at the speed of 15/12 or 15/13 for now and I'm able to make QSO at an average speed of 11-13WPM with not so much difficulties.

With that speed, it appears that it's not the average speed you'll find on air, it's I guess more in the 15-20 WPM range.

However, with little patience I'm able to have QSO, even by calling CQ or by listening to the band with other QRS hams, and it's very nice.

A tool that I use to help me to find QSO is the Reverse Beacon Network app on Android. It allows to put filters to restrict the data only on a wpm range and with bands. With that, I can see live CQ of other hams in my speed range, and I can easily QSY with them to answer them.

I try to have at least 1 on air QSO a day, in addition with my learning on LCWO.

73
Adrien

Thank you Adrien .
Is there a way to sort by wpm on the Reverse Beacon page?

https://rbn.telegraphy.de/

Includes filters for speeds (wpm):
Less than 20,
20-24, 25-29, 30-34, 35-39,
Greater than 39

and

allows "Sort by" speed of the filtered RBN spots.

73
Tom

Thx Tom, I didn't know that website, nice thing too !