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LCWO Discussion Forum [Atom LCWO Forum Feed]

This is a simple discussion forum for LCWO users. Feel free to use it for any kind of discussion related to this website.

Thread: how to increase speed?

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AuthorText


Posted: 2011-07-28 12:42
Hello everyone,
I have started in January to lern morse code. I have used http://www.justlearnmorsecode.com/ and lately I turned to lcwo.net site.
I like it very much because it is a web application and I can used wherever is a PC with internet connection + it has very motivational graphs ;-)
I needed some practice with Koch method to be able to receive with lcwo.net at the same performance as with my learning application (until I had an average>90% for lesson 40 at 20wpm 5wpm effective speed).
I start playing with code groups (and I am able to receive >90% 20wpm with 7-8wpm effective speed).
How to improve this? What is a good strategy? I know that 10 experts will give me 11 advice but they are better then none.
At 20wmp 8wpm effective speed everything is so fast that I cannot even think and my fingers are moving by thyself and I am afraid I reached a wall ... Will this change after another 100 attempts?
How did you do to improve your speed and what to expect (eg. for learning the letters I did every day 15-20min and without breaks it took me 6 months).
Thank you,
Bogdan


[deleted]

Posted: 2011-07-28 14:41
20/5 is pretty slow, I am afraid you fake yourself in that case, because you have 4 times the normal reaction time available.

20/10 is the advised speed to go through the 40 lessons.

In order to prevent that here you only learn to copy by touch typing, a possibility is to copy on paper, with a pencil, and one out of 5 exercises type the written result in your computer in order to get the desired grading. Touch typing is not the usual way hams copy during a QSO,

Best way to proceed now, according to my opinion is go to "Word training"
Put the parms on short words, 4 or 5 characters or so. the speed on 10 or 12 wpm fixed, listen to the word, try to copy it in your head, if missing, repeat it, and after 10 repetitions and still not copied try to write it down with a pencil during transmission.

After that type it in and check the result.
Everyday one exercise of 25 words will help.

Speed of progress is heavily dependent on your age.

Look also in Justlearnmorsecode under the Help button-->contents-->becoming proficient


Posted: 2011-07-29 16:23
The trouble with this site is that the WPM setting (at least in the Koch lessons) is very approximate. You may have it set to 8 wpm, but depending on the mix of characters it chooses you may actually get something a bit less, or maybe a lot more. Check the actual speed it reports after each exercise. I wish it would log the actual speed in the results table. That way I could see whether the exercises I did worse in were also faster ones...


Posted: 2011-07-30 07:29
Actually 20wpm with 8wpm effective is approximatively 10wpm and I can do this with >90%. But there is something weird happening at this speed.. I do not know if his is because of my sound card or my headphones or because I am tired and need a break... The characters that have repetitive dots sound as there is an echo or the dots get one over another.. If I listen only with one ear at a time the sound is clear but when I hear with both ears the sound is not clear as if the left and right channels are out of sync.
Thank you for the advice I will play with "Word training". I can receive without problems the 10-12wpm but usually I recognise the word after hearing it 4-5 times (the number of characters, one new character at a time)... somehow the chars do not want to be linked together... I will keep playing although the out of sync problem witch is very bothering.
[deleted]

Posted: 2011-07-30 08:48
@lzlep
As far as I know speed x/y means the character elements are x wpm and the spacing between completed characters is y wpm.

The speed is such that the duration of one dit is 1200/wpm millisecond.

May be the duration of a complete exercise is not what you specified, but the Morse timing is OK.

@yo2mke

Unknown to me, I expect the described phenomena is of neurological origine.
People with glasses that are very different in focus in order to correct myopy have sharp vision but due to the distance of the glass and the eye
lens, the picture on the retina is different in size. The brain corrects that unless it is too much, then you see double. Nice effect when you spread your cashed pay check in front of you on the table.

Sound of left and right ear are also processed and combined to get information about the direction of the sound source. I suppose that fixed delay difference in the brain is corrected on the long term, learning from the observed direction by the visual way.

It is possible to investigate,
Separate sold soundcards (Soundblaster) are accompanied by software, one program is Wavelab, you can change the delay between right and left channel of a Morse recording in order to find out.

For the time being, best way to solve the problem will be to listen with one ear only.

Copy by head and repeating with each repetition one more character is OK, After you copied the word, repeat again three or four times and copy in your head the word that you know already. In the word exercises, do not use a speed x/y wpm with x not equal y.



[deleted]

Posted: 2011-07-30 15:22
Bogdan (YO2MKE),

Your left ear is always trying to get into your right ear's business, hi. There's truth to that!

Before you think that you have some type of neurological disorder, a preliminary investigation would be to go over to a ham friends house and listen to the code using his computer and his headphones which are probably different than yours.

See if the echo or cw overlap is still there.

Before you do that, give your brain a rest for 3 days with no cw activity to make sure your mind is nice and clear when you copy cw.

Report back here please as this is very interesting.

Craig, AH8DX


Posted: 2011-07-31 21:56
As far as I know speed x/y means the character elements are x wpm and the spacing between completed characters is y wpm.

Yeah, I guess that's the theory...

The speed is such that the duration of one dit is 1200/wpm millisecond.

...which probably works out OK on average when the full character set is in use, and the text contains the expected distribution of characters...

Skew the distribution, and you'll get something else, maybe like this...

Result (25/8 wpm): Real speed: 79 characters / 70.9 seconds = 13.4 wpm / 66.9 cpm
[deleted]

Posted: 2011-08-01 12:39
I am afraid, that shouldn't be a good idea.

The denominator 8 in 25/8 wpm means that your character spacing is 3*1200/8 ms

That is fixed,independent of the character transmitted and the probability distribution of characters, and THAT is the time that your brain has available to recognise which character you received.

Changing the 25 (in 25/8) to 30 is not difficult. However increasing the 8 is for sure, and that's where you are training for.

Unless you swallow some powder I have available due to my profession, but I don't provide it, because that is prohibited by law in my and your legislation. You jump to 60/60 without any problem except your typing speed, that may be the limiting factor.







Posted: 2011-08-01 22:58
except your typing speed, that may be the limiting factor

Exactly. If the code isn't transcribed it can't be checked, so for doing exercises the limit is quite likely the rate at which code can be transcribed. An "e" doesn't take any less time to transcribe than an "o" but it sure comes over in morse a whole lot quicker, and it's that effect that the "Real speed" is showing. If the "Real speed" gets too high, say like this:

Result (25/13 wpm): Real speed: 129 characters / 83.9 seconds = 18.5 wpm / 92.3 cpm

then my transcription will fail because I can't transcribe random characters that quickly. For as long as random characters are involved, that final "Real speed" is what matters, and I have to juggle the WPM setting to get the "Real speed" to something I can keep up with...
[deleted]

Posted: 2011-08-02 12:11
Difficult for me to trace your thoughts Rick, because I am a certified Moron (by AH8DX).

I can only hope that I see your point.

First a warning:
Don't play with Koch speed. When you try to reach 20/20 as final goal and go to the next lesson when you reach 90% 20/20 then you are proceeding so slowly that you become frustrated and right here in this website is a guy, that got warned not to do that, but he persisted and finally quit obviously.

So listen to a Moron and keep your speed 20/10
Of course you can go faster thru the course with 20/5 but in that case you get problems in real world, because you can't match at the end of the course with it.

A valid alternative method may be to go 20/5 through the course and after finishing repeat the course with 20/10 .

So your mentioned and bold printed 13 bothers me.

Now listen. According to Dr Faust's formula is dit length 1200/wpm.

Tks Dr Faust, I appreciate your theoretical effort and I trust the published result, but, frankly, I am afraid you blow your obviously great mind with the chemicals that you have at your disposal and you are talking about.

That means Rick that when you copy an E with 20/10 wpm, the E is 60 ms mark and 360 ms letterspace.
So totalling the E requires 420 ms, that is less then 2,5
hits on your keyboard per second, makes a total of 150 per minute. Take a T or an I, you will find 540 ms per character, less then 2 per second.

I assure you (I don't mention people in order not to be accused of profanity by AH8DX) that two mating rabbits go faster.

So don't tell me that you can have problems with hit and peck typing the limited set of fast characters at that speed.
[deleted]

Posted: 2011-08-02 14:23
[deleted]

[deleted]

Posted: 2011-08-02 14:48
When one guy, who announced he should publicize my identity against my will when I speak/write to him on this web site, not edits his accusing message within one hour, I will omit my account at this website. In that case he can take over my job.
[deleted]

Posted: 2011-08-02 15:02
[deleted]

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