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Koch method to learn Morse

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Re: Koch method to learn Morse

#71

Post by ddingus »

swalberg wrote: post #13
arjvik wrote: 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.

It is more power efficient than voice. You put the same power into roughly 50Hz of bandwidth vs 2.2k for voice, so you can work the world on a modest station. Its also easier to pick out in the noise than voice. Amateur radio is more than just "have a conversation with a random person". There are contests, challenges where you try and contact some number of states, countries, etc, and events. One popular event is Par…

It's impressive to see / hear a good operator communicating right in the middle of a pile of noise. When I saw it done, it was with an older tube receiver, warmed up and stable, running a 100Hz crystal filter in tandem with a BFO.

A friend and I used to "tap" out Morse during church. There is a rhythm to it I find difficult to explain, but when one puts a bit of emphasis on the dash, tapping it all out comes through just fine. It's weird. At first it's just tapping, then one groks the other person's flavor of emphasis on the "dash" or "dah" and the characters sort of appear in the mind.

Re: Koch method to learn Morse

#72

Post by anthk »

Daub wrote: post #46

My father, who is an expert in matters relating to early wireless, was asked by the National Geographic to recreate the SOS message sent by the Titanic. This has historical significance as it was the first time that the SOS was used. In order to make it as authentic as possible, he used an ancient brass Morse code key wired to a spark transmitter. The spark signal was picked up by an old radio he had wired up to a ta…

Today software like fldigi would decode the signal perfectly.

Re: Koch method to learn Morse

#73

Post by srvmshr »

Twisol wrote: post #62
masukomi wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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://parksonthea…

I'm not a Morse operator, so I wouldn't know. That's why I said the function of these words may simply not be needed. The poster earlier claimed that no English word contains the digraph "hh", however, which is simply untrue. It's quite uncommon, and I'm sure the prosign use of HH is grammatically unambiguous in general, but it being invalid otherwise is not a well-founded reason.

> The poster earlier claimed that no English word contains the digraph "hh"

Context, my friend.

If you pick up regular non-colloquial words & unconjugated words, there actually is no word with a double H. I read this trivia in the ARRL handbook. Extremely well written covering everything HAM.

But like others are posting to prove a point in contrary, fishhook beachhead exist - but are either conjugated or colloquial. By that reasoning, every second word in Asian languages such as Vietnamese/Laotian has double H when scripted - but is it to be considered a standard mode of unambiguous communication over international frequency spectrums?

Re: Koch method to learn Morse

#74

Post by grendelt »

Daub wrote: post #46

My father, who is an expert in matters relating to early wireless, was asked by the National Geographic to recreate the SOS message sent by the Titanic. This has historical significance as it was the first time that the SOS was used. In order to make it as authentic as possible, he used an ancient brass Morse code key wired to a spark transmitter. The spark signal was picked up by an old radio he had wired up to a ta…

"It's a CQD, old man!"

CQ is what we use to hail another station ("seek you"). Hams use this all the time to call out to the ether for someone to respond. It's been used since telegraph days and early wireless was no different. BUT, the distress call before SOS was CQD.

That's very difficult to hear if you're trained your brain to filter out all the other ops calling "CQ CQ CQ" all the time. Your brain will hear the incessant CQ every time you tune where other stations are sending Morse. But to hear CQD, your brain must be actively listening and making sense of what's being said - hard to hear when you're not actively listening to the incoming signals. That's one (primary?) driving reason why SOS became the de facto distress signal. It's unmistakable (... --- ...) and not a sequence heard often. It took the responding ships a moment to remember that's what was being called out over the air. "It's a CQD, old man!" was famously recorded from the account of radio operators on responding ships.

("Old man" is a friendly term for one another on the radio. In Morse, we just abbreviate as OM.)

Re: Koch method to learn Morse

#75

Post by Daub »

grendelt wrote: post #74
Daub wrote: post #46

My father, who is an expert in matters relating to early wireless, was asked by the National Geographic to recreate the SOS message sent by the Titanic. This has historical significance as it was the first time that the SOS was used. In order to make it as authentic as possible, he used an ancient brass Morse code key wired to a spark transmitter. The spark signal was picked up by an old radio he had wired up to a ta…

"It's a CQD, old man!" CQ is what we use to hail another station ("seek you"). Hams use this all the time to call out to the ether for someone to respond. It's been used since telegraph days and early wireless was no different. BUT, the distress call before SOS was CQD. That's very difficult to hear if you're trained your brain to filter out all the other ops calling "CQ CQ CQ" all the time. Your brain will hear the…

> "It's a CQD, old man!"

Yes, you are perfectly right. My bad.

Re: Koch method to learn Morse

#76

Post by Twisol »

srvmshr wrote: post #73
Twisol wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a Morse operator, so I wouldn't know. That's why I said the function of these words may simply not be needed. The poster earlier claimed that no English word contains the digraph "hh", however, which is simply untrue. It's quite uncommon, and I'm sure the prosign use of HH is grammatically unambiguous in general, but it being invalid otherwise is not a well-founded reason.

> The poster earlier claimed that no English word contains the digraph "hh" Context, my friend. If you pick up regular non-colloquial words & unconjugated words, there actually is no word with a double H. I read this trivia in the ARRL handbook. Extremely well written covering everything HAM. But like others are posting to prove a point in contrary, fishhook beachhead exist - but are either conjugated or colloquial.…

> I read this trivia in the ARRL handbook. Extremely well written covering everything HAM.

> [...] a standard mode of unambiguous communication over international frequency spectrums

That's exactly the context that's missing for most participants in this thread :) Thanks for making it explicit for us! When you lead with "There is no word in English dictionary with HH", it sounds like the context is literally the English dictionary. What you're actually judging against is the practical lexicon of radio operators, which is very different and worthy of investigation independent of the lexicon the rest of us plebians use ;)

Re: Koch method to learn Morse

#77

Post by fr0sty »

bumbledraven wrote: post #69
fr0sty wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "Morse Expert" App available for Android/iOS does a pretty good job of decoding CW 'in the wild'. It can adapt to different sending speeds and does a decent job with non-ideal character/element spacing. The decoding algorithm uses some amount of Bayesian probabilities to decide what the proper decoding of the incoming signal is: http://ag1le.blogspot.com/2013/01/towards-bayesian-morse-dec...

Do you have a link for Morse Expert? It sounds like exactly what I want, but I don’t see any exact name matches when I search for it in Apple’s U.S. App Store.

My apologies. It appears Morse Expert is Android only, sorry. I tried to do a quick search on my way out the door earlier and was mistaken.

Re: Koch method to learn Morse

#78

Post by blonky »

15 years ago I worked with a guy who was a Navy Veteran. He’d served in Korea. He still knew Morse Code. He confirmed what many are saying here that it’s all about the rhythm.

Once we were asking him about his experience and when he had to go he wrote on the whiteboard. C U N T. I was shocked and embarrassed. He was a professional guy why would he write this word in our workplace? My coworkers and I laughed nervously. He was grinning and said when ships would leave the port you’d message them C U N T in Morse Code. Which stood for "See You Next Trip"

Re: Koch method to learn Morse

#79

Post by tdeck »

Daub wrote: post #46

My father, who is an expert in matters relating to early wireless, was asked by the National Geographic to recreate the SOS message sent by the Titanic. This has historical significance as it was the first time that the SOS was used. In order to make it as authentic as possible, he used an ancient brass Morse code key wired to a spark transmitter. The spark signal was picked up by an old radio he had wired up to a ta…

Was it this recording?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=snkwsU98QlQ

Re: Koch method to learn Morse

#80

Post by aeonik »

whoooooo123 wrote: post #22
aeonik wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ham radio operators still use it, it's just required for licenses in United States anymore. I believe radiobeacons still use them as part of their identification protocol in aviation as well.

I think you're missing a "not"

You are correct.
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