Paul D Kimbrel

Despite the rumors that the code requirement will be dropped for the General Class amateur radio license sometime this year, I’m bound and determine to get my General this month. That means I have to learn Morse Code.

My dad turned me on to this program called G4FON Koch Method Morse Trainer. It uses the Koch method of learning morse code. The basic idea is this: If you try and learn the letters by the “dots and dashes” and then listen at a slow speed, getting your speed up is painful. In fact, beyond about 10 words per minute (WPM), it’s basically impossible. Our brains just can’t look these letters up that fast.

So rather than start slow - you start fast! You start with two letters at the speed you want to go at. I choose the letters sounds at 20wpm with 10wpm spacing. Basically, you learn the sound of the letters - not the dots and dashes. When you can copy 5 minutes worth of those two characters with 90% correct or better, you add a letter. And then you continue until you have the whole thing.

Well, being the impatient man that I am (I only have 21 days to learn this as of now), I started cranking the number of letters up before I could really copy efficiently at where I was at. At first this wasn’t bad, but as I added more letters, I found myself rationalizing a slow down. I mean, heck, the test is 5wpm anyhow! But as I slowed it down - what did I do? I started listening for the dots and dashes. I thought I was doing well (I got up to 14 letters!), but I couldn’t get past those 14 letters. My copy was even getting sloppy - I changing letters as soon as I wrote them down. I was second guessing my self. I was completely loosing any hint of knowing what letters were what. I was getting discouraged.

So, I went back to 5 characters - the place where I started slowing the speed down. I cranked the speed back up to 20/10 wpm, and I found myself listening to the sounds - not the components of the letters again. And you know what? These letters were the letters I could copy at 5 WPM's! Huh…

Here’s a few things I’ve learned so far:

Learning at a faster speed helps at a slower speeds - not vice-versa. Starting a letter at a slower speed makes you listen to the dots and dashes - and that messes everything up.

1. When you check your work, you have to count those last second changes as a mistake.
2. It doesn’t matter if you got it right in the end.
3. If you wrote the wrong letter down in the first place - you reacted in error.

#3 is a huge one for me. I thought if I could get to the end and match my copy to what was actually sent - I was good! However, as I went along, those letters that I copied wrong and then changed, were the ones that stopped me dead in my tracks in mid-copy.

I have to learn to react to the sound properly, or I start “thinking” about what I have to write. When copying at 20+ words per minute, you don’t have much time, if any, to think. Even whe I start thinking things like, “boy, I’m hungery” or “what’s on TV right now?” - oops. I goof the copy.

Before this is all over, I may even learn to concentrate again! :)