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Up not ip - can't edit subject!

I was getting 80 - 90% at what I thought was 25/8. When I checked, it was 25/7.

Changed to 18/8 as a first step to 13/13 - my on air goal, since this what I think I can send at.

But error rate at 18/8 jumped up, and even with practice is staying up.

It's obvious, because you have been given wrong advice.

You expect that, slowing down, performance goes up but learning is not so linear (ask somebody like me who had to learn 4 languages because I had to, not for fun).

If I was you, I'd go back to 25/8 and gradually build up to 20/20. You can always go back to lower speeds once you become fluent at 20+ wpm.

I am at 20/20 and still count dits and dahs, let alone if I was at 13/13.

The problem with decoding is the time for reaction after the character is completely received. That time is/was expressed on this website as effective speed. The character spacing is 3 dits. One dit at 1 wpm takes 6/5= 1.2 second. 3 bits as character spacing at 7 wpm takes 514 ms.

At 8 wpm 450 ms

So do the experiment of going from 25/7 to 20 /7 and report what happens.

You have the same time span for decoding and get used to slower character speed.

Yup, that's better. Error rate down.

Actually you should decode while listening to the next characters. Write behind. Gives you plenty of time to decode.

Start by writing 1..2 characters behind

GL

Gerd, true, but I suppose not for starters, that develops later on.

G8GDS: Go further down stepwise to 13/7, when that is ok try to go to 13/8 stepwise to 13/13 that will take more time.

I'm not quite sure anymore why we were told to start Koch at 20 wpm or above, then when we have the characters and want to speed up to 8-12 wpm we are told to drop back to that character speed. Wouldn't it have been easier just to stick to 12 wpm from the start.

I'm starting to think that these different approaches to learning Morse are not based on sound scientific principles.

It seems a case of what worked for one person is recommended to another person as THE WAY, but it hasn't been established that the advisor learnt by the BEST method, or that it would be the best method for another particular individual learner.

Back in the day when Morse had commercial and military value I could see someone funding scientific trials to establish the best method for a particular learner, but that ship has sailed - maybe not in the Russian sphere of influence as I think their military still use it. I do believe that it has been established by educational experts that people have different learning styles, so I would be surprised if there was a single best method.

I think there is not a best method.

As a matter of fact there are ceilings in speed, probably due to the way of learning to decode.

Based on that fact, and avoiding a speed ceiling of 5 till 8 wpm, the hypothesis became to learn the characters at 15 to 20 wpm character speed, with wide character spacing.

In that case the problem is to shorten the character space to the required space.

Listening and decoding Morsecode with different character speed and effective speed is a bad experience.

Still there are ceilings at higher speeds, but for regular average communication use of Morse code, they are above that speeds of 15 till 25 wpm.

Bingo! The so-called Koch method is nowhere to be found. I made a bit of a search a few years ago and I couldn't find it. I think it is from 1936. In any case, it is in German and I doubt it has ever been translated (I could be wrong, please correct me).

There was a time you had to pass the morse test (at 5 wpm!) to get a licence. The test was not meant to be production-ready.

Many courses from US military back in the 1950s still forced association between printed dots and dahs and sounds. Unacceptable today.

I started and restarted many times, the first time at 20/5 and I think this ruined my learning. Ignore all these people saying that you should start at 11 wpm. We all know you develop a plateau if you start at very low speeds, unless you are a member of the FISTS CW club and you're proud of your 7 wpm.

Belarussians are very successful in breaking speed barriers at any level.

Perhaps some guy of that nationality will tell us their method of learning.

Because they still teach morse at school in those countries.

Is that true?