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9H2IC bd2aaj BI1FIS Colinhowe7 DEkstrom dremkin ea5etp F4IAA F4JOE galx Ian24 iz3lcp JA1BFD JF6CLO jh3tby Jimmy1c lapo lockjaw Magtour ofe p3 PA7TG Photiusb RHA58 Rio57 SP9SNC yast

Hello LCWO users,

in my good old tradition of starting new projects before finishing the old ones, I implemented a training mode very similar to Ward, K9OX's program "A Fully Automatic Morse Code Teaching Machine". It's listed in the left hand side menu under the Koch course lessons.

Description of the original program:
http://c2.com/morse/

It's still in beta, and I expect to find some bugs in the implementation. Only tested with Firefox so far. It automatically saves the user's current stats after 20 characters.

73, Fabian DJ1YFK

Morse Machine repeats a character when typed in wrong, that is didactically essential, I am missing that.

"If you get the character wrong it repeats it until you get it right. You start off with two characters, and when the program sees you are copying them correctly it adds another, and then another, until you are accurately copying the whole alphabet, numbers and punctuation characters! As you correctly read each character, the green bar above it goes down, so that you can easily see which characters are causing the most difficulty."


Measuring the percentage of correct copied characters in a time span combined with a minimum number of characters in that time span, could be a criterion for an automated "congrats go to the next lesson" or even just add the next character.

Fabian,

just completed the lessons. First of all thanks for implementing. Nice surprise to see something new in LCWO.

1) It seems to me that when entering a completely wrong character ('#') it pauses and continues only after ENTER. This could also be my slow UMTS and I could be wrong...

2) In the beginning there are very visible steps in the bar (when entering a correct char), towards the end the steps are microscopic and difficult to see. (But I did many lessons at a time and this may influence)

3) You may consider some audio or visual feedback when entering wrong characters. I am always happy to understand when I mix up letters - never giving up hope ;-)

4) You may consider at some later stage to leave it to the user which characters to train (maybe a tickbox per character?) and with which weight per character - unless morsemachine will assign higher weight (and ideally store it)for faulty chars.

Btw: used Firefox/Win XP

Gruß

Gerd.

Thanks for your comments. The MorseMachine is already very popular, with a few dozen users way over 1000 characters already. I think the concept is really excellent and I wonder why it has not gained much popularity. After all, the programs from K9OX and some clones have been available for decades already...

PA0WV: You're right. It'll be changed to repeat mistyped letters. The move to the next letter should also be automated, but I didn't implement anything like that yet for the first beta version.

DF9TS:
1) That's correct; it currently only continues when a wrong letter (but from the Koch caracter set) is entered, or space/enter. Should continue regardless of the entered (wrong) letter.

2) The bar size is always multiplied by 0.9 after a correctly copied character. The idea is that the bars should not vanish too quickly, otherwise the training would probably focus too much on the difficult letters. Of course I want the difficult letters to be sent more often in average, but still keep a good mixture of the letters.

3) Yes, I was thinking about the same; some unobstrusive visual feedback (not as colourful as in RufzXP :-), and maybe even evaluating the errors more thoroughly.
Not sure; it'd be interesting but maybe overkill to generate a full 41*41 matrix which shows the error frequency from character x to character y.

4) Yep, a tickbox under each character would be easy. Also increasing the bar height for errors may be useful, at least as an optional feature. And a general reset button. I further plan to make the bars behave like sliders, so if you click at a certain position of the bar, it will automatically change to that value.

Some other suggestions that arrived via email included grading the time needed to enter a character; also something very well worth considering. E.g. the slower the response, the less the error bar is lowered. Also, obviously, a more elaborate description will be neccessary.

It never gets boring :-)

73, Fabian DJ1YFK

Dear Fabian,

I just startet this very lovely feature yesterday with all characters and have saved more than 1200 of them, all bars down. Good.

Today is a new day and I startet this feature again. Expecting a new session I see that all bars are down but lesson 1. So I tuned up to lesson 40 again and startet training. But all bars are down and I have no chance to see if I'm typing in the right character. I'm training with this tool with a speed about 40 wpm.

So it would be nice that after the end / my end of a session the results saved to some kind of statistics to look after (e.g. 'home').

And, of course, the reset botton you wrote about. But not for the statistics, please :-)

At the moment now it doesn't help me much to get further in my training progress with "morse machine" because I don't see any faults or success :-/

vy 73, Mike

Hello PA0WV, you wrote:

"Morse Machine repeats a character when typed in wrong, that is didactically essential, I am missing that."

Yes, I'm missing that essential feature, too. But there is a solution for the moment I just found out: hit the space-bar and the present letter will be repeatet.

73, Mike +

Hello Fabian,

the idea for grading the time needed to enter a character (...) E.g. the slower the response, the less the error bar is lowered is a good one, but...

There is a problem in form of slow internet connections. Just now it takes some (very long) reaction time after typing in the character.

Sometimes it will take about 2 seconds after a new one appears.

If the parameter is the time for checking the response measured from the sound generating on the server until the receiving of the reaction of the user (maybe fast) there will be a problem.

What I want to say is: Even good or fast people will get an average value as a result depending on the hardware / internet situation.

I'm typing in characters very fast and training at high speed just now. Here with morse machine it is unfamiliar in comparsion with the windows program on my pc to wait so long for the next figure. Never mind!

73, Mike

Hi guys,

a little progress; from the changelog:

2010-07-30:

	* MorseMachine: 

		- Added Reset button

		- Use tone frequency from user settings

		- Allow to change error bars arbitrarily by clicking on them

		- Repeat wrongly copied characters until they are copied correctly

		  or return is pressed (= penalty on error bar)

		- Visual feedback of copied letters (correct = green, wrong = red)

By the way, instead of my chaotic TODO-list concept (the list, as you may have correctly guessed, didn't really exist :-), I am trying to organize the TODOs and ideas for LCWO on a mind map now. It's generated with VYM (View Your Mind) and automatically uploaded daily to http://dl0tud.tu-dresden.de/~dj1yfk/lcwo-mm.png. Maybe I can force myself to work a little more structured and organized by it :-)

Mike: The time-based grading will be optional if I implement it at all, so don't worry.

73, Fabian

Yeah, great, thanks for the work on it!

Time-based grading: No problem. TODO, the best one: I'll make it tomorrow ;-)

73, Mike

Hi Fabian,

(I think it is fun just thinking and brain-storming about new ideas and expansion on what you have created. These ideas contained within are just brain-storm ideas and in no way put pressure on you to implement).

Just had a little time this evening before heading off to bed. I love your new Morse Machine. It would be cool if somehow we could see our statistics. These categories are critical to keep track of progress:

max. wpm
% Accuracy
Attempts

(Statistics and Charting is what makes your site at the leading edge of technology). People love visualizing their performance and it sets the table for motivation.

I started out at 40wpm and kept cranking it up in 5wpm increments and got up to 75wpm where my Accuracy Rate really started to tumble, BUT without seeing any statistics, I am not sure to keep working upward. I know I was getting 3 out of 5 right or so at 75wpm.

I turned off some characters I never use in callsigns. A matter of fact, I didn't even learn some of those characters because I have no need for them.

Another thing that would be cool if you designed a morse machine that consisted of two letters instead of a single letter. As I get up in speed, I find myself piecing together sounds to complete a callsign like AA0CQ. This is a fairly easy call at 70wpm as the AA is familiar to me as one sound now. The 0 is an easy one at higher speeds and of course CQ is an easy one at higher speeds because CQ TEST or CQ DX is heard on the bands all of the time.

One and Two letter combinations are critical to copy short calls. Calls that are 1x2, 2x1 and 2x2 now open up a whole new world. Possibly an extra letter at the end of a 2x2 call that is pieced together is now a 2x3 call.

If you do implement the two letter idea, possibly could you add these sounds also:

/P
/QRP
/M
/MM

These need to be learned as one sound.

Anyway, it's easy to sit here and request stuff all night long because of course I am not doing the work, you are!

This site just keeps gettin better every day.

Peace!

Craig, AH8DX

WOW Fabian!

Just when I thought I was addicted to every type of cw practice program that is out there, you had to come along with yet another one.

My second night yielded another short practice session where I started out at 50wpm and worked my way up by 5wpm increments until my mistakes were overwhelming.

That point was at 85wpm tonight. At 80wpm, I still was getting almost 90% of them correct, I think. I am just going by memory and not recalling too many red letters coming up prior to 80wpm.

Do not come out with any more ways to practice or I'm going to have to quit my job!

PAX!

Craig, AH8DX

Data Included

I wanted to try something this morning before I head out the door to work.

I was curious to know what would happen if I listened now to two characters instead of just one, what would happen to my wpm and error rate. I know I can copy the single characters at 80wpm with little error rate because I did it last night here with Morse Machine.

I went over to another program to try it. In that program I am able to chart and graph a little more easily.

I did (3) runs of 50 groups of characters, starting out with a single character like here with Morse Machine. The second run, I added a character and the third run, I added another character.

Below are my findings:

Single Character
Total # of Characters in run: 50
Starting Speed: 35wpm
Ending Speed: 110wpm
Errors out of 50 Characters: 11

Two Characters
Total # of Characters in run: 100
Starting Speed: 35wpm
Ending Speed: 67wpm
Errors out of 100 Characters: 24

Three Characters
Total # of Characters in run: 150
Starting Speed: 35wpm
Ending Speed: 58wpm
Errors out of 150 Characters: 34

So now you know that just because someone copies single characters at high speeds does not mean that they can now copy complete words or calls also at that speed.

Comments about how to proceed ahead are always welcomed.

Have a great day everyone!
Craig, AH8DX

Fabian,

Sat down to do some runs of 70wpm Morse Machine and something's messed up. No worries, I am sure you are still fine tuning things.

Craig, AH8DX

I errornously uploaded a version of the MorseMachine which tries to send the stats to my development/debug server instead of lcwo.net. I will fix it tonight when I am at home.

Thanks for the other posts and comments. I will certainly extend the MorseMachine in the future, including adaptive speed settings, double letters etc. Then it will probably evolve to another separate training mode, not within the Koch Method trainer as it is now.

73
Fabian

Fabian,

I appreciate your hard work!

The audio on Morse Machine is not good. It is muffle-ed and the characters are not crisp BUT either are cw signals on the hf bands. I noticed at higher speeds that my ears really need the crispness of the sounds (letters).

Your (high speed) cw wisdom is really needed here. There is no need to change anything on your end if you feel that my ears must get used to all different audio sounds of every cw character?

I have compared your Morse Machine to the original Morse Machine at the same speeds in both programs and documented a better success rate in the other program where the cw is more crisp. (Never having a problem with / in the other program for instance. / has never been a problem at any speed for me).

Again, I understand that you are in the developmental stage of this and am greatful for all that you do.

Take care,

Craig, AH8DX

Fabian,

I just joined this site tonight, and I already like it better than the program I was using. I'm having a problem with the Morse code machine in which the first bit of audio is garbled about half the time.

It's not any particular letter, each of them sometimes does it and sometimes not. I've tried each of the different cw players in the options menu, and they all had the same problem, or wouldn't work on my computer.

Overall, it seems like a good learning tool.

73
Stephen, KF5GNT

Hi Stephen,

glad to hear you like LCWO.

What browser and operating system are you using, and at which speed does this occur? I know there are some problems with the Flash players, garbling the start of the playback a little, but it's not always reproducible.

73
Fabian

I'm using Firefox 3.5.9 and Windows Vista Ultimate.

Am I correct in thinking there're no statistics in this new trainer yet?

I guess it's driven by key presses, because it always waits until you press something before playing the next character. I wonder whether it shouldn't treat a delay of more than a certain interval as a mistake?

Also, I've a feeling the weight for mistakes happens too late? Should it not adjust the weight when you make a mistake whether or not you get the repeat correct, and if you get the repeat wrong, well isn't that another mistake?

p.s I think Morse Trainer is easier to use than the standard Koch trainer, at least when a keyboard's involved. Thanks for adding it.

Hi Fabian, great job !! I am studing for the first time seriously CW with your site !
I don't understand the green bar on morse-machine, what they are indicating ? every time they are falling down, also on correct answer. What represent the numbers on top of the bars ?

Keep going !! 73' and best regards from Pietro

@hb9rxc
Just read the thread and all your questions are answered.

When you find it easier when somebody else does that and explains it to you, I am at your service.

The green bars start high, they disappear on correct typed answers.
They disappear according to a rule that is called "exponentially", every decrease is 10% of the last length.
The counter above the bar counts the number of correct typed in characters, it does't change on a mistyped character.
The main advantage of the system is that the system waits for your typing, it is far less prone on frustration generated by to fast a stream of characters as happens in the Koch lessons.
The error rate and the speed of reaction are going to be the criterion for adding the next new character, and the probability distribution of mistyped characters will be emphasized in the near future.

Pietro (HB9RXC),

Once you have learned all characters and work with Morse Machine here, after maybe doing a couple hundred characters in one sitting, step back from your computer screen a little bit and you will see what looks like a graph.

It is a graph that is green and grey. The high green peaks are areas of difficulty (which need more work). The low grey valleys are characters which you have mastered.

This tells you which characters need extra attention.

Craig, AH8DX

@AH8DX

I understand that's your recent experience. I may guess i,s,h,5, and even d,b and 6 .

The point with Morse Machine is that it will not be necessary to step back and watch your errors, because the machine is watching you and presents you with more and more i,s,h,5 etc compared with the easy characters such as o j m t 0 when it turns out that on the running average you make more mistakes with them.

I love your insight and explanations, that clears up some questions I had but was too proud to ask them here.

I know that I have become a pest to many but try to help people out myself by not having them fall into the same pitfalls that I have fallen into.

Craig, AH8DX

@AH8DX
OK, the next pitfall you are falling in, is Morse Machine, it destroys your ability to build a mental buffer of received but not yet typed out characters.

So are you saying for what I am using it for; which is for high speed reflex work, that I must stop with this method and continue to use the method where I need to actually type the proper characters (for example: listening to a complete word before I actually type it; which I also have been working on?)

Is using Morse Machine for a beginner not doing the same harm because it isn't building that mental buffer?

The only thing consistant with my code is inconsistancy in the past week. Major confusion right now and taking some rest didn't even help.

Craig, AH8DX

I got it (work on building a mental buffer).

Could it be that working on words and listening to a complete word before I type could help me develop my mental buffer?

Could it be that working with words will also help me with callsign copy?

I have at hand a new task today.

Tnx,

Craig, AH8DX

@Moron & @AH8DX

Thank you for clear explanations and suggestions! Will work hard on it !! :o)

Pietro / hb9rxc

The MorseMachine now displays the effective speed in words per minute, calculated from the user's input delay.

It nicely illustrates how important the RX buffer in the head is. Even with very high character speed, I just can't get anywhere near 50wpm effective speed with it :)

73
Fabian DJ1YFK

It is a complicated method to measure that your reaction time ear->finger is 1/8 second.

Fabian,

The original "Morse Machine" increases the speed as the user gets better. Can you implement that part too please?

Colin

Do you think that make sense?

YOU determine the speed. Not the machine. Your reaction time can be measured, and displayed as effective speed. But is your reaction time to be measured as character space or wordspace, in order to calculate the effective speed?

It is nearly always easy to increase the speed, but the effective speed determines the time you have available to decode and to react (2 separate time spans to be added in Morse Machine) hence Morse Machine is a toy you better can't use. When you persist using it: the building of a necessarily required buffer in your head is severely retarded.

Go read about the original "Morse Machine", it's my understanding that Fabian was trying to implement an online version true to the original.

As far as I experience one can increase the character speed independant of the Koch lessons ,however you can not control the effective speed independantly.

Jack,

YOU as user determine the effective speed, because the effective speed is calculated from the time elapsed AFTER sending the character till the moment you press the corresponding type on ur mill.

Hence the effective speed is a complicated method to measure your reaction time. Morse Machine is a toy, Dont use it', UNLESS you are in the process of learning the character set.

Greetings--

just a quick question (as I couldn't find the answer searching through the other posts): what would be the reason (or more importantly, the fix) if with the Morse Machine, I can't get the audio to come out. Zero.

That being said, everything's fine and normal with the regular lessons.

Tried with Chrome and Explorer, HTML5 and Flash, but no love. (and yes, the status bar does move across the player as it's playing, or it thinks it's playing.

Thanks for your help--

Jason.

Jason, I've found that sometimes when I first try to use it I have the same problem. Usually I find that typing "Enter" starts up the audio even when "space" doesn't although when I type "space" I can see the sound widget moving it's slider.

Thanks!

That was it--I was "pressing any key" but not that key.

Ironically enough, after this "fix" the slider no longer appears to work (plays perfectly fine). The time indicator does, however, continue to function.

Not necessarily important in themselves, but maybe indicative of something else going on?

bjr tout le monde

I love using the Morse Machine.

It would be nice to see a graph of progress with Morse Machine like the one for the Koch lessons. I'm wondering whether alternating Morse machine and Koch lessons might be a good idea. Morse Machine seems to me to be an easier way to train myself to recognise individual letters, but the Koch lessons are probably better training for actually taking down messages...

Sharp mind. Fully agree.

Apparently the fastest I can receive individual characters is equivalent to 6wpm. I wonder how closely that matches my normal typing speed? One thing's for sure; it does explain why I have so much trouble trying to complete the koch lessons by typing the copy straight in. For random letter patterns (and callsigns, to a close approximation) my typing is going to be limited in very much the same way.

When you make a mistake in Morse Machine, does it count the mistake only against the character it actually sent, or does it also count it against the incorrect character you typed back at it?

Using Morse Machine, there is always about a 2 second delay after typing the letter before the next letter is played. I have seen mention of this in this thread, but have not seen a reason. Is this slow internet connection? or something else? Because of this, the fastest effective WPM is 3-4, so it makes this feature fairly useless, if that is the fastest I can ever make it reach.

No it is not the connection. It is javascript running at your machine. When you cut your WiFi or what have you, the program just proceeds uninterrupted. That's the way for you to answer your question all by yourself.

Morse Machine is rubbish, even when it should work faster. The only thing you can do with it is becoming acknowledged with the characterset.
The limit in speed is ALWAYS the reaction time between hearing a character en typing it out.
That is because it doesn't generate the next character before you type.

Principally this reaction is severe longer compared with hearing a bunch of characters and buffering them in your head.

Don't use Morse Machine it is contraproductive rubbish. DJ1YFK is wasting his time in developing it and wasting your time and the time of other users by using it. You have to hear a bunch of characters, starting with 2 in order to prevent that your speed is limited by your reaction time.

So don't use Morse Machine and plead to omit it from this web site.

Users that write "I love Morse Machine" are like children that like sweeties, and turn out to have artificial teeths when they are matured at 18.

Only the former.



The delay between typing a letter and the next playback is about 800ms here (Flash player), a little faster with the HTML5-player (600ms). In case of a slow network, it may become even longer indeed.

It's unfortunately not possible to make the browser-based MorseMachine as responsive as a program that's running on your own computer, and even then you'd probably be stuck somewhere below 10wpm.

It's good for learning new characters (preferably at rather high speeds), and to keep the motivation up, but the main means of practice should be the "normal" lessons with code groups.

73
Fabian DJ1YFK

I suspect making it count against both (if both are in its current set) might help the balance a bit. If (for example) I type "L" when "F" is played then I clearly don't know either "L" or "F" well enough...

I came to the same conclusions about it as Fabian has commented. It might be possible if it was pushed out as a fully embedded flash app with no html component at all - ie downloaded to browser as a flash app and running natively client side with no html requests.

My flash skills are a tad rusty so probably arent good enough to port it, but I could probably do it as an embedded java app. But in reality its probably just better to download the original K9OX prog and run natively if you need higher speed than the web version.

Fabian,

I just spotted this while looking for something else:

http://www.gazbming.com/getexample.php?id=86

Its an example of using ming to create a sound based flash file client side from php (see http://docs.php.net/manual/en/book.ming.php )

.... what if....

rather than pushing out mp3/ogg you used an embedded flash file as I commented above. PHP could assemble it using ming, it would have a bunch of parameters passed in: - eg which chars, speed (char and effective), duration, pitch etc. It would then build random chars client side and take keyboard input. When complete it would send back results via an ajax call and wait for further instructions.

It could essentially be an invisible embedded engine on any page just simply handling sound gen and keyboard response.

That would cut out any network overheads completely other than for intial push out and sporadic ajax updates of score and new commands - none of which are time sensitive.

Ive got a busy day today, but could probably knock up a proof of concept thing over the next few days if you fancy a dabble in that direction.

Hi Chris,
beautiful picture, an egghead without the egg!
.... ..

Interesting, didn't know about Ming yet.

Another option would be to have a separate player for each letter on the page. The players can be hidden, to avoid cluttering up the screen. Given that many pages nowadays use dozens of Flash elements, I don't think it'd be a problem, performance wise (neither with HTML5).
After each letter was played once, it'd be cached locally and the playback could start almost instantaneously.

73
Fabian

Morse Machine is great - I've never been able to learn the character set by just listening but the immediate feedback MM provides really works for me. Thank you. One question, I noticed in the Windows version that someone else wrote the error bars increase when you miss a character. On this version they can only go down and then they appear to stop with a few pixels left. Even though my accuracy on 'u' is apparently around 50% the error bar quickly drops. Also it is a bit confusing that the space bar doesn't count as "any key" to start. A simple hackaround might be to change the text to something like "Press 's' to start / Space to repeat / Enter to skip"

Thank you for a great program.

Yes, currently the error bars only decrease; maybe too quickly. I personally think that increasing them for errors automatically is not a good idea, however you should be able to adjust the height of the error bar yourself easily by clicking on the bar itself.

Thanks for the hint about the spacebar not counting as "any key"; clearly a bug that will be fixed.

73 & take care!
Fabian DJ1YFK

Maybe they decrease a little too quickly at first, but it does even out after a while.

Changing the error bars manually means pausing, moving from keyboard to mouse, and then re-starting, which takes me out of the flow and breaks my concentration. I think I'd prefer to see error bars going back up automatically when I make errors, on both on the character played and the character I typed incorrectly, probably by more than a correct answer moves them down...

...but even as it is, I'm finding it more effective for character learning than the original Koch lessons. Thanks.

Just wanted to add my thanks for a great tool to exercise those little grey cells. MM has really helped me out. No major complaints on my end.

Cheers,

David/KG6IRW

One little thing -- there seems to be no @ sign in the special characters. Even straight key QRP'ers use the internet nowadays and that character is essential for email addresses.

Morse Machine is a nice tool, like any learning tool it will work well for some people, not so well for others. Just understand it's limitations give it a fair trial. If it doesn't meet your needs/wants, move on to something else.

I do not agree. Giving a fair trial to rubbish demotivates hams that try to learn Morse code and choose this tool. Why not giving the eish5 method at 5 wpm a fair trial? May be it works for some people (that throw the key out of the window due to a ceiling at 10 wpm they can't break through)

Thanks for the Morse Machine. I enjoy using it, and my code speed is going up.
It was interesting to read about the Koch method. It seems to be working for me. Not going back to 5 wpm.

Hi,
I`m newbie.
Morse.exe on Windows worki great, but some time ago I change system to Linux Fedora .... It cannot start morsemachine (Linux version crash immadelty after start). Now I training on web page.

Can someone write morsemachine code on platform-independet version? One for Windows, Linux Mac and other systems like as webpage?

If the original Linux version by K9OX crashes, you may want to try to use G4ILO's implementation using "wine". Just tried it, and it works very well. http://www.g4ilo.com/morse-machine.html

73
Fabian DJ1YFK

Wine garbled sound on my computer.
Todays best is Webpage MorseMachine. Only problem - Internet some time not working in my place in Latvia :)

Personally my gripe with the Koch method as a beginner is it takes so long to progress all the way through and memorize all the characters.

If I can use Morse Machine to learn the characters much more quickly, then just jump to Koch lesson 40, plain text, callsign, etc training... then it seems like it has a use to me.

You seem to have some sort of personal distaste for it, but it is just that, personal.

As the dude would say, "well, thats just like your opinion man."

KE5VGV

No it is not just "like or dislike". I presented the rationale behind my thoughts.

You want to learn Morse Code,
The change of giving up and hence that the invested time is wasted is not negligible.

So I presented my thoughts in order to minimize that change,

When you listen to a character and you are not pressed by a short available time to react,

you have the change of learning wrong, by visualising, or other methods that need the available time interval.

Furthermore when you copy Morse with standard timing at a reasonable speed, let we say 25 wpm, then it is NOT so that you hear the character and you react by typing it out, and are after that ready for the next character.

Try your reaction time bij measuring the time between hearing a short tone that starts at random and you pressing an E on your mill. You will measure dependent of your age about 0,5 to over a second. When you need that long time you never can make any speed. 60 characters per minute thats a lousy 12 wpm.

The real thing with copying morse is multiprocessing, when you hear a character or a group of characters; you are in parallel typing out yhe previous group and you are running with typing or writing behind the copied text.

That is the only way to be independent of your reaction time ear to finger.

Morse machine does not train that.

you are at lesson 22, with 263 exercises, that is not bad,

So when you still really prefer morse machine, start right now with "words" exercises with the subset of characters you master already. Take short words repeat them, don't type them out before you copied them by head. Keep the character spacing of the words standard. Fix the speed at 10 wpm.

Gd luck. Take it or leave it, its your choice.

73 Fat

"Take short words repeat them, don't type them out before you copied them by head. Keep the character spacing of the words standard. Fix the speed at 10 wpm"
That is brilliant! Thanks. I had been using Morse Machine as a sort of warm up before doing my other software exercises but getting bored with it. This is fun though why I cannot seem to remember three letters beats me. I had noticed just lately that when working on the radio with my 'morse partner' that my pen has started writing the correct character even when my brain has stumbled over it. 73 Paul