I too learned Morse code from a chart (dots and dashes) in the Boy Scout Manual at age 11 or so in about 1955. I had no trouble at age 14 learning it by ear at up to 30 wpm within a couple of years of on-air operating (especially CW traffic nets).
In those days we didn't have audio code apps or code-sending machines (unless you had an Elmer who lent you an Instructograph). We fellow boy scouts must have somehow learned to rehearse and practice mouthing the code to each other using the standard "didahdit" protocol. I'm pretty sure that's what I was doing vocally to memorize the chart, which took me less than two days. The chart is the perfect shorthand for prompting the pattern for each character. I wouldn't want to be reading "A - didah, B - dahdididit, C - dahdidahdit, ...", etc. Give me the dots and dashes in a nice chart! If it takes you a month to learn the entire alphabet any other way, you're doing it wrong. It certainly does help to have one or more "code buddies" with whom you can practice mouthing the code at random times during each day when you're dining or walking or riding together. Maybe many adults don't have that luxury. It's important to mouth the code with the proper 1:3 ratio of dits to dahs, which means you leave off the 't' at the end of any but the last dit in a character. So when you say the letter F as "dididahdit", the correct timing is almost automatic. So you're learning the actual sound pattern for each letter that you have already memorized from the chart. It worked for me! Rick N6IET ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to arch...@mail-archive.com
