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Koch method to learn Morse

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Re: Koch method to learn Morse

#51
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no word in English dictionary with HH (°°°° °°°°). Beachhead

More commonly, "uhh", "ahh", and "ehh" (and their elongations) -- though I imagine their function is either fulfilled in other ways in Morse (prosigns?) or simply not needed.

My reference was towards unconjugated words. GP posted 'beachhead' - which is a colloquially derived American English word by conjugation of two common English words. Normally you don't see conjugated or stretchy words in amateur radio to facilitate esse. So Simple Wikipedia level of vocabulary, having words which are rather unambiguous to all English speakers. Outside of US, I am sure most people will pause to grasp whats a beachhead. Over HF your taps can be heard half way around the globe. Its considered good manners to be clear & concise

'Ahh uhh' etc aren't useful in a mode of telegraph communication which is rather very terse & commonly does not even include is/are/and etc in transmission. Pithy sentences relaying the content matter is encouraged - to speed up typing & also not to block useful airwave. Most HAMs are sharing a narrow set of channels & only one operator pushes-to-'talk' at any given time

Re: Koch method to learn Morse

#52
post #36
post #32

I haven't tried this site, but the most well known for learning Morse in your browser in Ham radio is: https://lcwo.net/ Which uses a similar technique. It also has quite a few more types of practice such as words, callsigns, games, contests etc. I learnt Morse code there last year before I did a CW academy online course and I really enjoyed the approach.

On iOS there is Morse Machine, similar idea for single characters. There is also morse.camp, a PWA that focuses on recognizing English words.

On iOS, I like the Ham Morse app. It does Koch and Farnsworth, simulates QSOs, and sends news summaries.

Re: Koch method to learn Morse

#53
post #3
post #2

Is there a good reason to learn Morse in modern day besides just for kicks? Some sort of survival situation in which your only form of communication would be Morse, and you can't get out of it by sending ASCII binary? Not knocking on anybody's learning for fun, just curious.

Why rule out a survival situation? While nuclear missiles would probably just end all life, there are a broad spectrum of other things that can go wrong in the next decade that just take out power grids. It would be good to be ready with more robust technology than GPS-aware microchips, I can see how it could come in handy. I'm seeing a lot of energy security issues out there, and there are extreme economic pressures…

Some infinitely more likely survival situations involve tooting on a horn or blinking a flashlight.

Survival situations are one of those power law distributions where the odds of one person being in a survival situation at some point in their life are surprisingly high, regardless how unlikely it would be for a couple billion people to simultaneously be in the same survival situation.

Re: Koch method to learn Morse

#54
post #2

Is there a good reason to learn Morse in modern day besides just for kicks? Some sort of survival situation in which your only form of communication would be Morse, and you can't get out of it by sending ASCII binary? Not knocking on anybody's learning for fun, just curious.

I don't know if you'd call it a "good" reason because its a rare skill to have, but for pilots the NDB beacons and VOR beacons usually transmit their ID in morse code, so you're a button press away from being certain you actually tuned in the correct navigation beacon.

Slightly improved situational awareness when navigating is probably more of a method to avoid a survival situation, than to be a survival situation itself.

Re: Koch method to learn Morse

#55
OT, does anyone know of an app that will decode Morse code that I type in using a single key like the space bar, holding it down long for dah and pressing it quickly for dit? It should figure out the wpm I'm using on its own, like a human would, rather than making me specify it, or at least it should let me select an arbitrary (possibly fractional) wpm rather than offering only a fixed list like 15/20/25.

Re: Koch method to learn Morse

#56
post #37
post #2

Is there a good reason to learn Morse in modern day besides just for kicks? Some sort of survival situation in which your only form of communication would be Morse, and you can't get out of it by sending ASCII binary? Not knocking on anybody's learning for fun, just curious.

> and you can't get out of it by sending ASCII binary? It's a minor point, but I doubt you'll find many people who can decode binary ASCII in their head (especially in contexts like tapping), not to mention that you'll need 7/8 bits per char instead of the ~3 Morse code uses.

Enter tap code, most often used by prisoners to communicate between cells. Row and column in a 5x5 table of chars, encoded by series of taps.

Re: Koch method to learn Morse

#57
post #51
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More commonly, "uhh", "ahh", and "ehh" (and their elongations) -- though I imagine their function is either fulfilled in other ways in Morse (prosigns?) or simply not needed.

My reference was towards unconjugated words. GP posted 'beachhead' - which is a colloquially derived American English word by conjugation of two common English words. Normally you don't see conjugated or stretchy words in amateur radio to facilitate esse. So Simple Wikipedia level of vocabulary, having words which are rather unambiguous to all English speakers. Outside of US, I am sure most people will pause to grasp…

So no withhold, fishhook, or hitchhike? How do they handle names like Munchhausen?

Re: Koch method to learn Morse

#58
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My reference was towards unconjugated words. GP posted 'beachhead' - which is a colloquially derived American English word by conjugation of two common English words. Normally you don't see conjugated or stretchy words in amateur radio to facilitate esse. So Simple Wikipedia level of vocabulary, having words which are rather unambiguous to all English speakers. Outside of US, I am sure most people will pause to grasp…

So no withhold, fishhook, or hitchhike? How do they handle names like Munchhausen?

By proxy.

Re: Koch method to learn Morse

#59

OT, does anyone know of an app that will decode Morse code that I type in using a single key like the space bar, holding it down long for dah and pressing it quickly for dit? It should figure out the wpm I'm using on its own, like a human would, rather than making me specify it, or at least it should let me select an arbitrary (possibly fractional) wpm rather than offering only a fixed list like 15/20/25.

there is a _lot_ of ham radio software that decodes live morse from live sources where where's no clue what speed it'll be coming in at.

Re: Koch method to learn Morse

#60
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no word in English dictionary with HH (°°°° °°°°). Beachhead

More commonly, "uhh", "ahh", and "ehh" (and their elongations) -- though I imagine their function is either fulfilled in other ways in Morse (prosigns?) or simply not needed.

do you realistically see yourself, or anyone else keying in those ?

Using morse is all about efficient transmission in high noise environments.

Personally, I think I'd be annoyed if i had to decode that whilst sitting on a mountain top, or wherever (not being hyperbolic SOTA[1] and POTA[2] are real things folks participate in).

[1]: Summits On The Air https://www.sota.org.uk/ [2]: Parks on the Air https://parksontheair.com/

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