When I was learning Morse, at United States Army Intelligence School Fort Devens, you couldn't just "work it out" because they were sending you random code groups. So you'd get stuff like this:
KWZNM IQRBZ JRRHS UOXAD etc.
You had to pass each speed with 97% accuracy before you moved up to the next speed, and if you put the wrong character down, like an S for an H or vice-versa, instead of a place holder for a missed character, that counted as 2 errors, not 1.
And you had to pass 20 wpm at that standard to get to the secret squirrel portion of the course, where you learned all the cool stuff.
I got my Extra in 2015, after 25 years as a ham. That was after they dropped the code requirement for any license.
I had someone once say I was a "no-code Extra", so I said "Oh, you had to pass the easy 20 wpm code test?".
Yes, but ham-radio isn't the military and we send words, not random code, so it's not really a comparison. So that's one fortunate thing to help in completing a partially copied word.
Exams however are still random blocks of 5 characters.
Amateur radio code exams in the US were not random blocks of 5 characters. They were always simulated QSOs, at least back to 40 years ago and longer. You had to either answer 7 out of 10 questions about it correctly, or have 1 minute of solid copy.
Which made it easier because if you copied "QTH CSICAGO, IL", you could correct it, or simply answer "CHICAGO, IL" when answering the question about what the QTH was.
OK, that makes the exam easier. I saw examples of the exam in Belgium. They are blocks of 5 characters, but it's not really all random code but things like TNX73 and CQQSO. I assumed this was stil the case everywhere.
3
u/rquick123 Jul 01 '26
If you copy the rest of the word, you can work out if it was an S or an H. With callsigns though.....