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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday February 29 2020, @06:20AM   Printer-friendly
from the ==-===-*=*-***-* dept.

Learning Morse Code The Ludwig Koch Way:

Most countries have dropped the requirement for learning Morse code to become a ham radio operator. Because of that, you might think Morse code is dead. But it isn't. Some people like the nostalgia. Some like that you can build simple equipment to send and receive Morse code. Others like that Morse code is much more reliable than voice and some older digital modes. Regardless of the reason, many people want to learn Morse code and it is still a part of the ham radio scene. The code has a reputation of being hard to learn, but it turns out that is mostly because people haven't been taught code in smart ways.

[...] If you want to learn the code, or if you want to learn it better than you know it now, the Koch method is pretty simple. If a bunch of students can learn code in 14 hours, you should be able to, as well. Even spending an hour a day, that's only two weeks.

There are plenty of resources, but one we like is LCWO (Learn CW Online — CW or Continous Wave is ham-speak for Morse code). The site costs nothing and will track your progress. Once you've learned it, you can practice text, words, callsigns, and common ham radio exchanges.

Even if you don't need Morse for a ham license anymore, it does open up new opportunities. If you don't want to do ham radio, think of all the Arduino projects you could do where the device could signal you with a blinking LED and you could command it with a single switch contact. Not that we'd use a scheme like that to count blackjack cards. We'd never do that. If you don't want to use the computer and still need a coach, you could try this 1939 code trainer.


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  • (Score: 2) by engblom on Sunday March 01 2020, @01:40PM (2 children)

    by engblom (556) on Sunday March 01 2020, @01:40PM (#964871)

    Many times I have considered to learn Morse just for having a Morse keyboard in the phone. The advantage of a such keyboard is obvious: as you have only one big button you can type without looking at the screen. There are so many situations when I would want to type something while keeping my eyes somewhere else. For example, typing in an address while driving, writing a quick response while being in a meeting etc.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2020, @07:59PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2020, @07:59PM (#965049)

    You might try typing 8-bit ascii, using 8 buttons, one under each finger (leave your thumbs curled around the steering wheel.) Steve Roberts did this while on his recumbent bike, he was cycling around the USA in early days of the internet, using ham radio to connect to his site.

    Probably no harder to learn ascii bit patterns than it is to learn Morse(??)

  • (Score: 2) by crb3 on Monday March 02 2020, @04:16AM

    by crb3 (5919) on Monday March 02 2020, @04:16AM (#965289)

    IMO you'll be better served by having two buttons, for dit and dah, and incorporating an iambic keyer into the code interface, which can also have a WPM dit-rate control. Machine reception/decoding, even with a good rate-adaptive internal clock, can choke on sloppy hand-keying, and your one screen button won't allow you anywhere near the precision of a Navy knob straight key. You're in luck that there's an open-source project whose code you can study/raid: K3NG's Arduino-based iambic keyer is widely regarded as excellent.

    https://github.com/k3ng/k3ng_cw_keyer/wiki [github.com]