Lincoln Short Wave Club

I must admit that this is my preferred method of communication but I am concerned by the poor standard of CW that I am hearing on the bands. It will not do any good to complain about the poor CW, I would rather give advice to bring the standards up. I am very concerned that someone who has just reached 12 wpm and gained the Morse competence certificate can start teaching Morse code without knowing the pitfalls that can happen.

PLEASE DO NOT USE A MORSE KEY UNTIL YOU CAN READ MORSE AT 12 WPM AS YOU MAY PICK UP BAD HABBITS AND END UP SENDING RUBBISH and add to the multitude of bad operators on the bands.

To make my observations credible, I was taught Morse code to 20 wpm in 1965 when I joined the RAF and was a Special Operator Telegraphy for many years. During that time I had to take weak signal CW and also with a lot of QRM or QRN up to speeds of 35 wpm as it was part of my job.

What I have to say next may upset some operators but these views are not only held by myself, but also held by a lot of experienced CW operators World Wide,

I completely disagree with slow Morse and was appalled by introduction of the 5 wpm Morse test which was introduced in the 1980’s. I was a Morse Examiner for the DTI & RSGB at that time. To become a Morse Examiner you had to take a 20 wpm Morse test and then be interviewed to be able to qualify to examine people on the 12 wpm. Morse Test. I am currently a registered RSGB  Morse examiner up to 30 wpm

If you bear with me things do get better. Read this article first by David G. Finley, N1IRZ “So You Want to Learn Morse Code“before coming to any conclusion about my article.

To set the record straight I will not work slow Morse stations but I will work stations sending Morse slowly. (Characters sent at 12wpm with long space)

As a member of FISTS The International Morse Code Preservation Society I will actively encourage people to learn and use CW but will discourage the teaching of slow Morse and encourage people to learn the code using the Koch method. (If you have read the article by David Finley on the link above then you should know what I am talking about. If not please read the article NOW as it saves me repeating what he is saying, saves my fingers typing and reduces the length of my article.)

It may sound funny as I am a member of FISTS, but I will not teach Morse code, but I will give advice about learning it. This is because today nearly everyone has a computer and there is software that you can run on the computer today will teach you Morse better than taking it from another CW operator. It is also beneficial to listen to the good CW on the bands as it is slightly different from computer sent Morse.

Ray Goff G4FON has written a superb program using the Koch method of training which is internationally renowned and I will always recommend his program to learners and experienced Morse operators alike as not only can you learn CW but it can also be used to improve the standard of experienced operators as well. The “Koch CW Trainer” is freely available from Ray’s website.

To end, I will freely give my advice to anyone having problems learning CW or having problems in using the Koch CW trainer and hope to work you on the bottom of the bands soon.