{"id":5406,"date":"2023-05-19T18:41:19","date_gmt":"2023-05-20T01:41:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/?p=5406"},"modified":"2023-05-19T18:41:19","modified_gmt":"2023-05-20T01:41:19","slug":"learning-morse-code-with-cw-academy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/?p=5406","title":{"rendered":"Learning Morse code with CW Academy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I signed up for the <a href=\"https:\/\/cwops.org\/cw-academy\/cw-academy-options\/\">CW Academy<\/a> online course with the goal of learning <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Morse_code\">Morse code<\/a>.  You can learn this via self-study &#8211; there are many apps (e.g., <a href=\"https:\/\/apps.apple.com\/us\/app\/morse-mania-learn-morse-code\/id1511042196\">Morse Mania<\/a>) &#8211; but it seemed like more fun to have some synchronous time with other learners and to get to try to communicate live.  I was inspired by my friend <a href=\"https:\/\/www.qrz.com\/db\/WT8P\">WT8P<\/a>, who has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wt8p.com\/cwa-beginner-welcome-message\/\">taught this class in the past<\/a> (sadly, not while I&#8217;m taking it!).<\/p>\n<p>There are some great online tools available for Morse code learning and practice that anyone can use:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/morsecode.world\/international\/trainer\/trainer.html\">Morse code trainer<\/a>: Listen to learn in progressive &#8220;sessions&#8221; that introduce a few new letters and numbers at a time\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/morsecode.world\/international\/keyer.html\">Morse code keyer<\/a>: Practice keying your own Morse code using the `z&#8217; and `x&#8217; keys on your keyboard\n<\/ul>\n<p>We were instructed to set the &#8220;character speed&#8221; to 25 words per minute (wpm) and Farnsworth speed (spacing between letters\/symbols) to 4 wpm.  The goal is to hear the symbol patterns as a unit, rather than counting dits and dahs.  25 wpm is pretty fast, and it definitely takes practice to be able to discriminate similar patterns!<\/p>\n<p>But apparently the real way to practice is to get a physical &#8220;paddle&#8221; that sends dits and dahs.  I ended up getting this cute little paddle, which is &#8220;iambic&#8221;: you press one side for a dit and the other for a dah; holding one down gives you a stream of dit-dit-dit or dah-dah-dah; holding both gives you dit-dah-dit-dah&#8230;  <\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" width=200 src=\"https:\/\/m.media-amazon.com\/images\/I\/716JKrQPq9L._AC_SX679_.jpg\"><\/center><\/p>\n<p>On receipt, I discovered that it needed a keyer, which is what actually generates the signals (and &#8220;sidetone&#8221; sound so you can practice without sending your fumbles out on the radio).  My teacher was kind enough to loan me a keyer until I can get something myself!  I can now make dits and dahs to my heart&#8217;s content :)<\/p>\n<p>So far I have learned (E, T, A, N), (O, I, S, 1, 4), (R, D, L, 2, 5), and (C, U) (they come in batches).  My favorite letters are O and C, and my biggest challenges to send are L and R.  My D and U also need some work.  Letters are introduced in (roughly) order of complexity which also corresponds (inversely) to frequency.  Here&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/?p=2238\">a great visualization of the alphabet and numbers 0-9<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>Interestingly, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Morse_code#International_Morse_code\">Morse code wasn&#8217;t actually developed by Samuel Morse<\/a>.  Although he had the original idea to encode content in a similar fashion for transmission via telegraph, his encoding was quite different.<\/p>\n<p>Class meets twice a week for an hour, during which our teacher drills us by transmitting Morse code words until we indicate we got (&#8220;copied&#8221;) them, and then we get a chance to try to send our own words, with varying success.  After an hour of this, my brain DEFINITELY feels full.  But in general, I look forward to learning, and practicing, more!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I signed up for the CW Academy online course with the goal of learning Morse code. You can learn this via self-study &#8211; there are many apps (e.g., Morse Mania) &#8211; but it seemed like more fun to have some synchronous time with other learners and to get to try to communicate live. I was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[62],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5406"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5406"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5418,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5406\/revisions\/5418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}