N6IET has some good insights. For sure some methods of learning code are more efficient than others. For example, sending letters at a high speed, but leaving more space, or not memorizing the letters from a chart. HOWEVER many of us did everything wrong and still progressed to high speeds in spite of these transgressions. For example, about 69 years ago a neighbor kid and I strung wires between our houses. We made up our own code, some common letters had many dots and dashes and other seldom used letters had only a dot or two. We also memorized the chart. However we became moderately successful in this strange code. Perhaps 5 years later we entered the Boy Scouts and once again memorized the Morse code and passed the tests. For a short time we could converse in either code, but he never moved on to ham radio. I was the school sponsor of a HS radio club, and one field day we did not have enough operating positions, so no problem, some of us just climbed up into a few nearby hills and had QSOs with each other and our hacked flashlights at perhaps 12 WPM. Most of the kids had no problem adapting to the light signals and most had zero experience with light. Several times in my 65 year ham career I started learning to read American Morse (the landline code) on a sounder, which was easy, but never followed through with this, but even without practice I can still read the sounder at least at 18 WPM with “our” Continental Morse code. The brain is an amazing organ and capable of much more than we often realize. However there are no real shortcuts, so hundreds of hours of operation is required for moderate speeds, and many hundreds or perhaps thousands of hours are required to become proficient at “HIGH speeds”, which I will call over 45 WPM. Some folks will not be successful at speeds more than about 35WPM, but these speeds were seldom required, even when I operated as a shipboard CW op, and also as a land based coastal CW op where most traffic was at 20 WPM or less, and seldom over 25WPM. Rick KL7CW
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