Posted on 02/23/2007 6:45:07 PM PST by vintage patriot
Morse code is in need of some serious SOS.
The language of dots and dashes, first used during the infancy of electronic communication in the mid-1800s, is going the way of Latin.
Beginning today, amateur or "ham" radio operators in the United States won't be tested in Morse code – also known as Continuous Wave – in order to be licensed by the federal government.
In an effort to advance the hobby, the Federal Communications Commission in December agreed to eliminate the five-words-per-minute Morse code requirement for people seeking their upper-level class licenses.
(Excerpt) Read more at ocregister.com ...
I did a tour at Clark in 61-62, and stopped over at CAB in 1967 flying from Saigon back to Tachikawa.
"Dayton??"
Nope. Good ole' Rochester,New York, where I live.
Hi Fester, I learned code from cassette tapes and on-air
listening for the most part. That was back in the mid to
late 80's. Now its available on the internet, do a search
on Google to start. Look for learing Morse Code. There
are websites out there that you can type text and it plays
the code for you or it plays the code and you type in what
you hear. ARRL(American Radio Relay League)website has
CD's for learning code. You can also look for Ham radio
equipment suppliers like AES or The Ham Station. Good
luck. CW is a lot of fun.
Mike
It's relatively easy to build an electronic Morse Code tranmitter and not terribly hard to write a program to translate Morse to text. Given that one has the power for the transmitter, you should be able to power up the computer.
The advantage of Morse is that it's very easy to implement; all you need is a channel and a switch. The primary disadvantage is the training required to use it effectively.
A second disadvantage is that on/off keying is a horribly inefficient modulation scheme. Even counting power consumed by the electronics, efficient modulation schemes can give any idiot the ability to send and recieve for a lot less ergs (watt-seconds) per bit. The prevalence of digital cell phones is evidence of this.
Morse code (cruel misnomer! ) is obsolete. Sorry.
R
73 SK
DE
Enterprise
BT
What did you think of the Sox's decision to tell Fat Boy Curt, "No Deal" on his contract extention?
This is one of those things that I recognize the importance of, but hated nonetheless. Morse was one of those things I never could master. No matter how much I practiced, I never could copy more than 18wpm or send more than 14.
I knew this old Senior Chief that could copy 40wpm in his sleep. Occasionally he'd break out this speed key he kept in a velvet lined wooden box and show us how they did it "back in the day". Impressive stuff.
Yes.
When you're approaching from seaward at night, it makes it possible to distinguish it from the gazillion condo lights and other background clutter.
The problem with trying to master the Morse code by memorizing dot/dash patterns is that your brain hits a processing limit at around 5 WPM. The key to going faster is to recognize characters as rhythms. Since the rhythm changes with increased speed, you should learn what it sounds like at your target speed. Morse code training programs can be set to deliver characters with the correct dot/dash spacing for a target speed, but limit the throughput by sending fewer characters until you master recognizing the sound.
SSB can be pared down to about 2.4 KHz bandwidth for normal voice work. AM with full carrier is more that twice that bandwidth. Very wasteful. Morse code sent with CW (on/off carrier keying) is under 500 Hz bandwidth. A good receiver with an active audio filter can pin it down so you just hear the station you care about.
That has been done too. It was reported that some of the Vietnam POWs employed Morse code to tap out messages to each other between their cages.
My favorite Morse code story comes from the days of the railroad telegrapher. Railroads employed American Morse code instead of the International Morse code. The difference is that there was no "sounder" that could create the longer "dash" sound, so American Morse code is sent with timed "dots".
The railroad was in need of a new telegrapher in a town, and posted a job notice. The waiting room was filled with eager applicants. Everyone was waiting for the door to open to sit for an interview. Suddenly, a kid stood up and walked to the door. As he opened it, the rest of the applicants were incensed that it wasn't "his turn". At that point he asked why nobody else in the room jumped up and came to the door. The reason he ran to the door is that the current telegrapher tapped out a message with his pen on the door. The message said to come to the door immediately if you want the job. The young kid was on the only person in the room who had the necessary skill to pick out the message being tapped out on the door. He got the job.
I've been using D-STAR (developed by the Japanese), which is a digital stream (voice and data) sent by my little hand held Icom radio on narrow-band VHF (6 Khz) to a local D-STAR repeater. The repeater has an internet gateway that I can connect to, and will route my transmission to any other D-STAR repeater also connected via a gateway. I reguarly talk to folks as far away as Australia. Sort of like IRLP, but the digital conversion is done right in the radio.
Lot's of Hams don't even consider this to be Ham Radio. What the heck, it's a HOBBY, and you're supposed to have fun with it. I've been having fun with D-STAR.
I upgraded to General last year, just so I could claim to be in the "old guard" of Hams who had to pass a morse code test. Silly me; 5wpm = 0wpm to those who had to pass the 13wpm test.
There's no comparison. CW is much, much more intelligible. The first time I "worked all states" (i.e. confirmed contact with all 50 states), all contacts were made with CW using a wire antenna on my roof held aloft by a broomstick. 37 of those 50 contacts were made with less than one watt of power.
To just hear the sound, click here.
The beauty of CW is that it is a universal language that uses "Q codes" for common words. This makes it possible for one to communicate with any other ham in the world regardless of language barriers that would make verbal communications impossible. From the East Coast, I can communicate with Africans and Europeans quite easily in the early morning using CW and a simple wire antenna.
In the 1960s, sailors at the Naval Computer and Telecommunication Command (NCTC) had to learn Morse Code. They also had a football team. Their favorite team cheer was, "Three dits, four dits, two dits, a dah -- NCTC rah, rah, rah."
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That's how I learned. My older bro was going for his badge. We had a setup at home. I still have my dad's key. Dad was a Sparky during WWII on several ships and we had wires going up the wall in the attic. It was just cool....unlike an ordinary house.
You're right. It is a fascinating skill to learn, at least have a bit of knowledge of. I don't think Morse will completely die due to its general versatility.
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