AKICIF: Remedial-Morse program needed
Joy Beeson
I've been to Sourceforge. The program descriptions are really big on
details of interest to programmers, but have two sentences max on what
the program *does*. And there are forty-six of them; downloading all
in the hope that one will do what I want is not an option.
My problem: fifty years ago, I learned International Radio Code
at 5 wpm. (Whoever wrote a 5 wpm code requirement into the law should
be *shot*.) This got me into bad habits that have made it impossible
to learn code. I copied on-air practice now and again, and used up
reams of paper, but never got anywhere and eventually forgot about it.
But now computers have made the Koch method practical! All I have to
do is to download a program . . . which won't put extra space between
the words without putting extra space between the characters. Extra
space between the characters reinforces, hones, polishes, and tamps
down firmly the bad habit I'm trying to break.
So I set the program to send normally, and in that mode, I can't get
any practice at all.
What I need is a program that will send just one "word", then wait
until I hit the space bar, whereupon it will either brap and play the
same word again, or chirp and send a new word.
It would be nice if I could set it to send words two at a time after
I've learned all the letters, so I could learn the space character
too, and then three, then four . . . but I think that once I've
learned all the letters and punctuation marks, I could go on from
there.
--
Joy Beeson
joy beeson at comcast dot net
http://roughsewing.home.comcast.net/
The above message is a Usenet post.
I don't recall having given anyone permission to use it on a Web site.
Keith F. Lynch
> But now computers have made the Koch method practical! All I
> have to do is to download a program . . . which won't put extra
> space between the words without putting extra space between the
> characters. Extra space between the characters reinforces, hones,
> polishes, and tamps down firmly the bad habit I'm trying to break.
> ... What I need is a program that will send just one "word", then
> wait until I hit the space bar, whereupon it will either brap and
> play the same word again, or chirp and send a new word.
What you're describing isn't quite the Koch method. The Koch method
involves sending each character quickly, but with lots of space
between the characters. I don't agree that that will build bad
habits.
Possibly one of the programs mentioned at
http://viennawireless.org/cw.php
will do what you want, or close to it. If not, you could write
your own.
> It would be nice if I could set it to send words two at a time after
> I've learned all the letters, so I could learn the space character
> too,
The space character is just silence. It's true that, timed correctly,
Morse has a pleasing rhythm to it. But of course the Koch method
involves deliberately *not* timing it correctly, on the theory that
correctly-timed very slow Morse builds bad habits. I'm agnostic on
the question. I learned Morse informally, working my way up gradually
to about 25 words per minute.
> and then three, then four . . . but I think that once I've learned
> all the letters and punctuation marks, I could go on from there.
The only commonly used punctuation marks are period, comma, question
mark, hyphen, and slash. I couldn't tell you the Morse for an at-sign
without looking it up.
--
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.
karl.j...@gmail.com
> The only commonly used punctuation marks are period, comma, question
> mark, hyphen, and slash. I couldn't tell you the Morse for an at-sign
> without looking it up.
... .... .. ..-. - ..---
Karl Johanson
Tim McDaniel
... -. .. -.-. -.- . .-.
--
Tim (bless you, morse(6)) McDaniel, tm...@panix.com
Michael Stemper
>In article <40cee455-d6ca-4aca...@t19g2000prd.googlegroups.com>, karl.j...@gmail.com <karl.j...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>On Mar 29, 7:49 pm, "Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> wrote:
>>> The only commonly used punctuation marks are period, comma,
>>> question mark, hyphen, and slash. I couldn't tell you the Morse
>>> for an at-sign without looking it up.
>>
>>... .... .. ..-. - ..---
>
>... -. .. -.-. -.- . .-.
>Tim (bless you, morse(6)) McDaniel, tm...@panix.com
For the rest of us, there's
<http://morsecode.scphillips.com/jtranslator.html>
After using it, I agree with you.
--
Michael F. Stemper
#include <Standard_Disclaimer>
91.2% of all statistics are made up by the person quoting them.
Joy Beeson
<k...@KeithLynch.net> wrote:
> Joy Beeson <jbe...@invalid.net.invalid> wrote:
> > But now computers have made the Koch method practical! All I
> > have to do is to download a program . . . which won't put extra
> > space between the words without putting extra space between the
> > characters. Extra space between the characters reinforces, hones,
> > polishes, and tamps down firmly the bad habit I'm trying to break.
>
> > ... What I need is a program that will send just one "word", then
> > wait until I hit the space bar, whereupon it will either brap and
> > play the same word again, or chirp and send a new word.
>
> What you're describing isn't quite the Koch method. The Koch method
> involves sending each character quickly, but with lots of space
> between the characters. I don't agree that that will build bad
> habits.
>
> Possibly one of the programs mentioned at
> http://viennawireless.org/cw.php
> will do what you want, or close to it.
Bookmarked. Will investigate when I get my brain power back. (Will
double the dose of tea tomorrow, to see whether I can stay awake from
eight to five.) (Did, also saved some of the tea for after lunch, had
only half an hour of being dozy.) (Haven't had my nap yet, but I
think I'll send this tonight anyway.)
> If not, you could write
> your own.
I did write my own. Called it "Mill" because one copied by keyboard.
It could probably be altered to suit my present needs -- if I still
spoke the language it was written in, and if it had not been lost
several upgrades ago.
> > It would be nice if I could set it to send words two at a time after
> > I've learned all the letters, so I could learn the space character
> > too,
>
> The space character is just silence.
The space character is silence of a specific length, and separates a
character stream into words. It's at least as important as the
full-stop character that separates a stream of words into sentences.
> It's true that, timed correctly,
> Morse has a pleasing rhythm to it. But of course the Koch method
> involves deliberately *not* timing it correctly, on the theory that
> correctly-timed very slow Morse builds bad habits.
You're thinking of Farnsworth Spacing -- which, as the phrase is now
used, is diametrically opposite to the Farnsworth Word Method.
I still think "here it is" whenever I hear "can you catch it?", but
Farnsworth failed to break my habit of thinking about the dits and
dahs instead of hearing sound patterns. And sometimes I garden-path.
A day or two ago I caught the last character of a station ID as
"buncha dits and a dah -- if it had been two or three dits I'd have
known how many, so it must have been four. The numbers are logical
(brief picture of the number pattern) -- so that was a six."
(For any lurkers still reading this: four dits and a dah mean
*four*.)
> > and then three, then four . . . but I think that once I've learned
> > all the letters and punctuation marks, I could go on from there.
>
> The only commonly used punctuation marks are period, comma, question
> mark, hyphen, and slash. I couldn't tell you the Morse for an at-sign
> without looking it up.
"At" is didahdahdidahdit. (I looked it up.) "At" was recently added
for the sake of e-mail addresses.
I don't remember slash from my previous attempt to learn.
"Slant bar" has the wrong number of elements for a punctuation mark.
(Five is for prosigns, and it's listed among the prosigns in _General
Class 26-007 - 2011_ -- I wonder what <abovestrike>DN</abovestrike>
means?
I do have a handle on punctuation marks -- or, at least, on
didahdidahdidah -- I hear the long patterns as patterns.
-------
I am definitely not taking a practice exam tonight.
Joy Beeson
<jbe...@invalid.net.invalid> wrote:
> _General
> Class 26-007 - 2011_
"-" was a typo for backspace: _General Class 2007 - 2011_.
Keith F. Lynch
> The space character is silence of a specific length, ...
Just be glad you're not learning landline Morse, which had
half-spaces.
> ... but Farnsworth failed to break my habit of thinking about the
> dits and dahs instead of hearing sound patterns.
I'm agnostic on which method is best, but I firmly believe that any
method will work, given time. I do recommend that you practice
frequently, and that you do so at a speed where you miss about a
quarter of the text.
> I wonder what <abovestrike> DN</abovestrike> means?
It means the same pattern of dits and dahs as those letters, but
without any inter-character space, as it's one character. So slash
can be represented as an abovestruck DN, TF, NR, or XE.
Similarly, the distress signal isn't SOS, as most people think, but
abovestruck SOS, i.e. it's really just one character, which could
equally well be represented as abovestruck VZE, IJS, E2EI, S8E, etc.
Keith F. Lynch
> ... What I need is a program that will send just one "word", then
> wait until I hit the space bar, whereupon it will either brap and
> play the same word again, or chirp and send a new word.
I went to a ham radio club meeting this evening, and I asked about
this. The closest thing to what you want that anyone knew of was at
lcwo.net. I was told that it will send call-signs one at a time, and
wait for you to type in what you just heard. When you get one wrong,
it will go slower. When you get one right, it will go faster.
I went to the meeting despite today's cold drizzly weather because the
speaker was the guy in charge of ham radio on the Space Shuttle and in
the International Space Station. He's been involved with that program
for over 20 years. He gave an interesting presentation on the subject.