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AceOx AF4O AK6LW ATSUSHI bernjuer billywilliamson Colinhowe7 Cubby cwonline DeuceGoose doxiepal Drako1555 G4LXX Hunter7474 IT9GSF IU7TUY JJ38 JK1TCE JNUZ JQ3KWM K3YH K7FZD KA5HXL KG7GKE ki9ng KN6TKM KQ4JFT LucienDe nonagenarian pu7lbp R6LJX robertjl sakura saseith sitges46 SP2BMR suu test urpilot42day UT3UHN W3EWA WILLYsk

hey, i’m zach, known as bacon or jan Pekon online. some of my friends forced me to reeled me into learning morse code so that we can communicate subtly using blinking out dits and dahs. (by the way, i only know a few things about ham radio, but i know more about tv than ham radio) i just got started on the koch-farnsworth method course. i already passed the k/m test perfectly 2 times in a row, but i’m struggling with u. it’s kind of like juggling 2 balls being easier than juggling 3. if someone can help me out here, that would be appreciated. thanks.

K/M is an exercise - not a test. The "test" is just an indicator that it has sunk in a bit.

You will be exercised on them through all 40 of the different characters exercises

Without this you may well find you suddenly aren't so good with them anymore . .


Expect to spend several months learning morse - even at 15 mins every day without fail or even twice a day.

If the several months turns into a year or more - don't be surprised. Some ( very few ) people take a few weeks - others a few years, most several months.

Aptitude counts for a lot. Attitude for the rest. I count good hearing as part of aptitude.



You are ( probably ) aiming to decode as an automatic reaction ( i.e without thinking about it ) rather than remembering each character recognising it.

That is to say - hear morse -> the character just pops into your head out of no-where with no effort required.

This comes from MUCH repetition - so decode decode - repeat repeat repeat until it is second nature.


You may get through the exercises at 20/10 or 20/20 or even 25/25 but you may have to slow down to get through and then speed up afterwards with more practice. It depends how high an aptitude you have. Just get yourself through all the exercises with 90% accuracy and think about speed later.



If you go through the exercises too quickly it won't all sink in properly and you will stall around lesson 10,
so make sure you are hitting 90% of a variety of chars most of the time before moving on.


Another trap to avoid is typing in the results if you can't already touch type - you MAY form a link between char and key-press which will be an effort to break

YMMV

Let us know how you are getting on, anyway

CB

Welcome to the forum Zach. You will find no forum member "dumber'n" me. I am hands-down, the dumbest student of anything you can even think of. (However, being this dumb means that I get to work harder to keep up.)

You can create some custom lessons for copying the character "u".
For example, you can use special "u" lessons to copy and paste into Fabian Kurz's CONVERT TEXT TO CW option. Like this:

ut ub uc ux ul.
um uy ur uv ui.
ue uk un us uo.
ud uj uq uf uh.

Such custom lessons can be used daily to strengthen your recognition of "u".

Be sure to be "writing" the characters. Hearing combined with writing improves memory function. You can add to this by saying the "u" character in some of the lessons if that is not to much of an additional operation. Use your judgement in this.
The spaciing shown above may not be to your liking and in that case you can make the lesson for copying like this:

u t u b u c u x u l.
u m u y u r u v u i.
u e u k u n u s u o.
u d u j u q u f u h.

or like below if you can copy faster:

utubucuxul.
umuyuruvui.
ueukunusuo.
udujuqufuh.

Of course, a person might think something like:
"But that probably cannot help! I know the "u" is coming!"

However, the fact of the case, is that having a foreknowledge of the character being sent from time to time is not a barrier to learning to recognize it when it does come. (In a way, all of our learning is based upon a memory/foreknowledge about what is expected to come. We just do not think of it that way most of the time.)

Also, you can create a custom lesson for improving the "u" recognition with a copy practice something like this:

u9 u2 u4 u8 u0.
u1 u7 u9 u3 u6.
u5 u2 u8 u0 u9.
u4 u6 u1 u3 u8.

Consistent drill with difficult characters, in the absence of combination with ALL of the other characters can help.

Working with all of the other characters can continue in your normal way.

Hi Bruce,

I see you spended an hour to reply on three posts in this forum, a little research in the hi-scores page learns that you did not do any kind of regular exercise on this website. No kochlesson, no QTC, no plain text, no Words no codegroups. You are enrolled here since 2018, so honestly I think you are not in a position to give a beginner advice.

Your published exercices in this forum, especially the number groups, to be pasted in CW text to code, does not give the opportunity to check for errors, just like Codegroups-figures-only does.

Especially that fact was the reason for my question.

The program of WA2NFN just easily produces all your exercise proposals, when you advocate using 'Convert text to CW', it will be very useful for you, you just publish in this forum your peferred command line.

The topic starter here learned k and m, tries to learn a third chararter u in companion with k and m, so your advice of combination of u and a through z is worthless, you obviously did not read his question.

Have a good day, and take your psycho pharmaca in time, is my unsollicited advice to you.

You could probably have worded that much better. It's a pity you feel you need to be so rude.
However, advice to the OP is that you are still at the very start. Just keep going and run exercise 2 repeatedly until it sinks in. Keep at it and post back your progress.

It's posts like this that keep me off of social media. Keyboard bravery.

Kevin, don't go.

Kevin, it is you, OC and a handful of others that keep this website on a helpful and friendly course.
The rest of the stuff is hardly a deterrent to me. I keep learning and enjoying these CW exercises. The "Passive Aggressive" nonsense only serves to show that there is occasionally a socially primitive personality around, exercising operations which deter people from a generally cheerful atmosphere. It does not actually bother me. I have seen my share of real suffering in life, and the word banter of a person seeking to dominate just is not sufficient to suppress my own enthusiasm for learning something.
I wish the best to the newcomers who come here hoping to find something other than a kind of tyranny which presupposes the authority to dictate, and who can write what and when they are permitted to do it.
Basically, I consider all experience profitable for learning, which is why I do not shy away from engaging in dialogue with friends and foes equally.
Otherwise, I am quite busy at the moment in some business negotiations, but still doing the CW practices.
Besides Kevin, why would I regard this as unpleasant, when several of you CW practitioners are quite modest in your demeanor?
So, you betcha, we can have a lot of fun here.
Also, I think we should always remember the famous maxim: "Wherever you go, there y'are!" Heh heh! [Otherwise, if they cannot take a joke, forget'em!"]
Catcha ya later, brother.

I expect Kevin isn't going until it suits him - just doesn't want anything to do with some of our correspondents.

You can all set up your very own:-

"we hate the LCWO Discussion Forum grumps and trolls and those people who have a go at us"

private user group, ( https://lcwo.net/usergroups )

attract all the like minded people and chat amongst yourselves and never read any of this again, except in secret . . .

cb

I wonder how Kevin is doing after two years? :) I'm just starting to learn Morse code

You can send a personal message - in case he wants to keep a low profile.

How are you doing ?

cb

Nice thread, makes my day!

public available AI, like copilot, chatGPT, Gemini, Grok.com

Here’s the full conversation rendered in US English, keeping the meaning and tone intact:

User: make an ASCII text file consisting of 100 comma‑separated words of 3 letters per word, the second letter always a “u,” and the first and third letter each randomly from the set a, b, c, d, e, with double the probability for “c” compared to the others

Assistant: Here’s an example of what such a file could look like based on your specifications. I randomly assembled the words so the second letter is always u, and the first and third letters are chosen from {a, b, c, d, e}, with c twice as likely as the other letters.

Code
cub,cud,cuc,cuc,cub,cuc,cud,cac,cuc,cuc,cuc,cuc,cud,cub,cuc,cuc,cuc,cac,cuc,cuc,
cud,cuc,cub,cuc,cac,cuc,cud,cuc,cac,cuc,cuc,cuc,cac,cuc,cud,cub,cuc,cac,cuc,cuc,
cac,cuc,cuc,cud,cub,cac,cuc,cud,cac,cuc,cuc,cuc,cud,cuc,cac,cuc,cac,cuc,cub,cuc,
cac,cuc,cud,cuc,cac,cuc,cuc,cac,cud,cac,cub,cuc,cuc,cac,cuc,cuc,cud,cuc,cac,cuc,
cac,cud,cuc,cuc,cub,cuc,cac,cuc,cuc,cud,cac,cuc,cuc,cuc,cac,cuc,cuc,cac,cud,cuc
???? Tip:

Save this as .txt to get an ASCII text file

Letter distribution follows your description: c is about twice as likely as a, b, d, or e

Do you want me to also create a script so you can generate new variants any time? That would make the process nice and flexible.

User: the first letter is not random

Assistant: Ah, I see your point — in my example, the first letter seemed to follow a pattern instead of being truly random with the weighting you gave.

If I understand correctly, you want both the first and third letters to be chosen each time from {a, b, c, d, e}, where c is twice as likely as the others, and the second letter is always u.

Here’s a new, fully random example of 100 words under those rules:

Code
cub,cac,cud,cuc,cec,cuc,cab,cuc,cad,cuc,cac,cec,cbc,cuc,cec,cuc,ced,cuc,cac,cuc,
cuc,cuc,cuc,cec,cuc,cac,cbc,cuc,ced,cuc,cec,cuc,cdc,cuc,cuc,cec,cac,cec,cac,cec,
cuc,cac,cec,cuc,cad,cuc,cec,cuc,cec,cec,cac,cuc,cac,cbc,cuc,cec,cuc,cec,cuc,cuc,
cac,cuc,cuc,cuc,cec,cuc,cec,cec,cec,cec,cuc,cec,cec,cec,cbc,cuc,cec,cuc,cac,cuc,
cuc,cec,cec,cuc,cac,cuc,cec,cuc,cec,cec,cac,cec,cec,cuc,cec,cuc,cac,cuc,cec,cuc
???? Save as ASCII text file:

Copy the text

Paste into a plain text editor like Notepad

Save as words.txt (UTF‑8 or ANSI both fine)

Do you want me to also include a small script so you can keep generating these sequences yourself?

User: the first letter always turns out to be c

Assistant: True — in the examples I gave, the first letter ended up (by chance or my method) always being c. That’s not truly random as you intended, where a, b, c, d, e should all appear, with c having only double the chance of the others.

I can do better by selecting both positions (1 and 3) independently with those weights for each word. That yields something like:

Code
duc,cud,buc,duc,cub,cuc,cud,eub,cuc,aud,cuc,dud,cuc,duc,cuc,bub,cec,cuc,due,aue,
cac,buc,cuc,cud,duc,eud,cuc,auc,cec,duc,cuc,cec,bud,cec,cdc,cuc,cud,auc,cuc,cec,
cuc,cec,cuc,cec,cec,buc,dud,euc,cec,cec,cuc,cec,cec,cec,buc,aub,cec,cuc,cac,cec,
dud,cac,cec,cuc,cec,cuc,eue,cec,cec,cec,cec,cec,cuc,aud,cec,cac,cec,cec,cuc,cec,
cuc,cec,cac,dud,cuc,cec,cec,cec,cac,cec,cac,cec,buc,cuc,cec,cuc,cec,aud,cuc,cec
???? What’s different here

Positions 1 and 3 are chosen independently

Weights: c ≈ 40% chance, others ≈ equal share of the remainder

So “c” still appears often, but not exclusively

Want me to make a quick script for this in Python, or would you prefer another language like JavaScript?

User: What are the weights of the other letters?

Assistant: You said c should be twice as likely as the other letters from {a, b, c, d, e}. That means the probabilities (weights) for each random position are:

Letter Weight (relative) Probability (%)
a 1 16.67%
b 1 16.67%
c 2 33.33%
d 1 16.67%
e 1 16.67%
Explanation:

There are 5 letters, with c counting double: 1+1+2+1+1 = 6 weight points

Chance for c = 2 ÷ 6 ≈ 33.33%

Others = 1 ÷ 6 ≈ 16.67%

Do you want me to now generate a set of 100 words applying these weights exactly for both first and third letters so you can see the distribution clearly?

Would you like me to now also translate my explanations about the weighting into an example script so you can run it anytime? That would tie the whole workflow together nicely.