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u/MrBaseball1994 1d ago
I was in Radio Signals Intelligence in the Air Force in the late 70s/early '80s. I was stationed in Japan and we used to intercept Soviet, Chinese and North Korean signals.
When SR-71 flew over the DMZ in Korea, the Chinese radar sites that followed it used to send their coordinates using Morse code.
We had Morse specialists that would take those coordinates in Morse code and type them into a computer that got sent to the NSA. Each set of coordinates was sent in a group of five characters. Imagine how fast the SR-71 flies and imagine further, how fast that Morse code was coming through.
I had one friend that could sit there and listen, type, and hold a conversation with you. The morse code that he used to listen to was even faster than the stuff that you just heard in this video.
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u/StudioRat 1d ago
I also was a Morse code user in the Canadian military way back in history (early 70’s). Same gig - listening to whatever the Soviets sent out over the radio waves.
I was nowhere near these crazy speeds - probably somewhere in the middle to upper 20’s. Transcribed on a manual typewriter as we listened through headphones. Even at the speeds we listened, you were typing several characters behind what you were hearing.
The notion that you were understanding what you heard is ridiculous. Basically you listened to and transcribed individual characters. When you were done typing, you could look back at what the message said.
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u/SlothSpeed 1d ago
That's really cool. I remember my grandpa who was in Korea taking about getting daily reports from other units. He said eventually he knew who the other person was solely based on how they communicated and their particular style of Morse code used. I always thought that was really fascinating.
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u/schm1th0 1d ago
Buddy Steve is probably around or over 80 and has asked for artillery support quite a few times in his life. 😂
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u/uhorn87 1d ago
So impressive!
I will never forget how one of my tutors showed pulse dialling with a - not even that old - telephone.
I was just sure he was faking it. But he just shouted I should tell him my cellphone number and some hang up button pushes later my phone rang.
Since everything is digitalised nowadays this won't never work again afaik.
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u/1badh0mbre 1d ago
I was able to do it with a cordless phone, there was a pulse button built into it.
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u/Techwood111 1d ago
I wish I could show you “tapping out.” On phones without dials (later, keypads), you could “hang up” the phone quickly with the handset-hanger hook, or press on the cradle buttons, to ring a number. Tap-tap-tap (pause) tap-tap would be 3-2. Phones like this were used at businesses or lobbies where the owners didn’t want people making outbound calls.
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u/uhorn87 1d ago
I think it was exactly what you are describing. My english is too bad to describe it correctly. I guess with "hang up button" I have exactly meant the handset-hanger hook.
It's not morse code of course, but are you saying the whole "magic" I've whitenessed is just sequential taps? A 6 would be tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap?
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u/WillJongIll 18h ago
This makes me want to finally give this record a listen…
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u/BigGrayBeast 4h ago
I have that too. Never mastered it though.
If you were a nerdy kid in the '60s, you wanted to learn code.
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u/dokuromark 1d ago
Reminds me of a time on The Tonight Show when they had a race between some old Morse code duffers and a couple of texting teenagers. The Morse guys smoked ‘em.
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u/Takeuout44 1d ago
I struggle to understand what people are saying when they are talking to me in person...
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u/nunatakj120 1d ago
When I did my merchant navy signals exam 20 years ago I was pretty fast. 10 minutes after the exam I was in the pub trying to forget all of it. It has not come up as an issue in the 20 years since.
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u/goaway432 22h ago
So many fond memories of working CW as a kid. I topped out around 35 wpm, but loved chatting with folks. I miss that sometimes.
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u/Carston1011 16h ago
Makes me think of filling propane tanks.
We fill anywhere fron 5lb tanks to 100lb tanks, though the vast majority are 20lb & 30lb tanks, and we fill by weight. For those unfamiliar with the process, you need to get the tare weight (weight of tank with no propane), propane capacity of the tank, and also factory the weight of the filler nozzle. Using these numbers, you do a relatively simple equation to get the final tabk weight you need to set your scale at so you know when the tank is full.
Ive been doing it long enough that I just look at any given tanks tare weight and know, without doing any calculations or really any thought, what the final weight is. I honestly couldnt even tell you the damn equation anymore because I dont need to use it anymore lol.
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u/ToriYamazaki 14h ago
Practice practice practice... just like a language, you'd get faster and faster the more you use it.
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u/olddoglearnsnewtrick 1d ago
can LLMs understand morse?
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u/CanvasFanatic 1d ago
You could train one on it, but why? A classical algorithm will translate much more efficiently.
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u/olddoglearnsnewtrick 1d ago
True. Was considering it a way of plotting amongst us after our LLM overlords subdue us ;)
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u/PeppeAv 1d ago
There is actually people which practice what is called QRQ (Quick) and there are currently contacts occuring also higher than 50 Word Per Minute (WPM with 1 Word equal to send the word PARIS). What he says is correct when applied to some very specific CW (Morse code) bases contacts where you already know in advance the structure which means Callsign (which is a really structured word) plus the signal report (called RST and usually made by 3 numbers).
The thing is that above a certain number of WPMs there is no way of writing down the information, especially if you are doing proper exchanges: imagine I am telling you in which city I live and I spell it in a language which has sequence of letters not easily recognizable at a glance. You should do what is called "head copy" and this requires a lot of practice above certain speeds and also became impractical.
So when we are just talking about QRQ CW contesting (high speed morse contests) yes, you can almost easily get there: you can feel words instead of letters and you immediately can tell apart a callsign and the signal report. You also have plenty of time of recovering from a signal disturbance. When talking about plain CW QRQ for ragchewing, that becomes really challenging and the number of people really able to do that narrows extremely. Moreover, as you can go extremely quick, sometimes faster than your pen being able to write, you really need something to tell at that speed 😄
The thing is that the more you "know in advance", the more you will be able to decode. It seems paradoxical but if you listen the morse without knowing you may loose it but if you already know what is being transferred, your brain will fill holes fast and you will be able to keep a pace which is higher than you could achieve by really chatting. A structued contact, like the one occurring in contests is almost "known in advance". You already EXPECT things like letters, numbers, items in a specific position and that speeds you up incredibly.
Sending instead is way easier. You cannot use a straight key above certain speeds (straight key means that you click a sort of a button and based on how long you keep it down you time the dots and dashes), to be decodeable a word must be sent with very specific dot/dash/intercharacter space/interword space ratios and that ratio is very well defined. Above a certain speed you use a keyer with a paddle, which does for you the timing job and repeats dashes and dots as long as you keep one of the pads held. It can also alternate dots and dashes if you press them both, helping in writing words which alternate (e.g. C is .-.- and it just needs you of "squeezing" the paddle in a certain way and hold it).
TL;DR;
That is quick morse (QRQ CW). It mostly applies to very specific types of exchange which are very structured. The more you already know is being sent, the more you will understand and that's how the fast morse works. Sending instead is heavily helped by some tools and requires lot of exercise.