Great Morse Code Tutorial

I've been learning Morse Code using the Koch method, and while it's the best method that works for me, I was getting board just repeating combinations of letters and would forgo my training sessions.

I decided to search the internet and see if there were any other methods to learn Morse Code and I stumbled across the CW Operators Club and their CW Academy. The next academy is not until Jan/Feb of 2015 (it's that popular and all booked up for this year!) and I couldn't wait that long to continue my training.

On their CW Academy Student Resources page I came across a link to a CW tutorial by Ron Brownstein of CWOps.  It talks about using some program called Morse Code Trainer.

The Morse Code Trainer software is web/java based and is written by Stephen C Phillips.  It follows the Koch principle but unlike other Koch software I have used before, they start introducing words using the letters you have just learned.  In the first session alone you learn the words 'tea', 'tee', 'eat', 'ate', 'at', 'tat', 'teen', 'neat', 'ten', net, and 'tan'.  How's that compared to boring repetitive strings of e, a, t, and n's?

So why is learning words important?  Well for one, speed.  If you only learn to recognize letters you limit your speed to how fast you can recognize individual letters.  Once the speed gets up to where the dits and dahs run together you lose the ability to distinguish between the letters.  If you learn to recognize the pattern or rhythm of the word instead of the letters you have just gained a lot of speed.  The other important thing about learning words is proper Morse character spacing. If you only send letters equally spaced then that is what you get at the other end, a string of letters that you have to play a puzzle game with to form a sentence.  But if you send words with spaces between the words you now have a proper sentence at the receiving end. The software starts you at 20wpm character and word spacing and I didn't find it hard follow along at that speed.  So you can see already in session 1 you can copy and send words at 20wpm, a respectable speed for a beginner!

So what equipment have I been using to struggle through this learning process in place of CW Academy?

I am using my Yaesu 897D in CW mode but with BK turned off so I'm not transmitting and an old Vibroplex Original Standard bug (circa 1955) that belonged to my Grandfather.  I have the sound from the radio headphone jack going in to the computer and have DM780 (Ham Radio Deluxe V5) listening to the audio so it translates the code into letters or more importantly words on the screen.  I now know when my spacing is correct as sentences with words show up on the screen instead of a string of letters.

Using the bug to send along with Morse Code Trainer to learn the letters and words (that's how CW Academy does it) makes the process a lot more interesting for me and keeps me coming back for the training sessions.  I may be too distracted by the bug as I find myself sending more than listening and my listening skills (at least to the live radio) seem to be lacking.

Session 1 as sent by the Morse Code Trainer software

Having said that however, I am only on session 2 in the learning, so my vocabulary is still very small and I think that has a lot to do with it.

So I'll keep plugging away with this Morse Code Trainer software and see where it goes.

73, and who knows maybe we'll CW on the air sometime soon!