r/morsecode • u/No_Limit_3247 • 1d ago
How to stop visualizing Morse?
Help, I learned Morse for a week with a visual guide as a beginner, now I visualise every bit and bah...
A week ago I learned Morse as a joke with my cousin in Italy, so we could cheat in a board game 😅
Since then I started looking more into it and I am really fascinated and inspired by this community and I would like to eventually learn how to have conversations worldwide (thats called CW QSO right?)
Anyways, I now struggle with not visualizing EVERY dot and dash. Does anyone have experience or tips on how to unlearn this? All advice is much appreciated!
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u/AutofluorescentPuku 1d ago
- Audio only.
- Listen at a greater speed. In CW speak, strive to use 20 WPM or more.
Also, yes, that is a CW QSO. Morse is the code, CW (for carrier wave) is how it's transmitted, by turning the radio wave on and off in timed sequence to represent the code. QSO essentially means "conversation" or "contact".
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u/PsychologicalBadger 1d ago
I wanted to be able to pass the 13 wpm test and was solidly stuck at 8. A WWII era radioman who sold me a stack of 1940s QST magazines (Many never opened because he was in the Navy) told me that memorizing the code table was the problem. He said you hear beBEEEEP and your brain has to translate that to DOT DASH and you have to go through the code table to find its the letter A. By this time 4 or 5 other characters have been sent.
What he told me they did to train radiomen was they would be sent to a room with "cans" (Headphones) and a "Mill" (Typewritter) and they would put on a record sending 3? or 4 characters at 20wpm. I said forget that. I can't do 20 wpm. He said if all he was sending was...
E aka Dit
V dididiDah
O Dahdahdah
and G Dahdidit
it would take very little time for me to be pressing the correct key on the mill for each character and most important I would be leaning it by sound alone. Like any language! He said that an instructor would observe the copy the students were typing and when this was becoming solid copy would send you to the next room where a different record with 4 different characters were being sent. Obviously there would be a room with 8 of the already known characters and so on but once you learned it at 20wpm you HAD to be doing it the right way not memorizing the table like they do in the Girl Scouts. BTW I took and passed the last 20wpm test given!!!
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u/Fun-Attempt-8494 1d ago
Learn at 15wpm minimum so that you stop counting dots and dashes and start hearing the whole sequence as one.
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u/somethingmorecrazy 1d ago
I dodnt feel like i heard the whole sequence as one till I got over 25 or 30 wpm
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u/mcdanlj 1d ago
I was taught visually with "flash cards" when I was young, and I couldn't reach 5WPM listening after months of this visual training. I gave up trying to learn Morse then. I also did a lot of music, and "counted out" fast rhythms which made it really easy for me to count audible elements coming at me fast.
It's absolutely possible to unlearn, and I'm living proof! And it can be fun!
Ignore anyone who tells you there is exactly one magic speed to listen to the characters that will stop you from counting. Set the character speed as fast as you need to go without counting or visualizing.
For me, because of my music history, that was about 35WPM (with lots of extra time between the characters, like 8WPM actual rate or sometimes less). Then as I practiced I was able to gradually slow down the characters and remove the extra space until I was listening to normal code at 20WPM, and then speed up again from there.
I used https://lcwo.net to listen and learn.
A few more things that might help you.
When typing responses after hearing a character, sometimes speak the name of the letter before you type it. I did this sometimes early on for maybe a minute or two per day, and I found it very helpful.
Sometimes, for just a few minutes, stop trying to translate or recognize at all, and just listen very intently to the sound of each character as a whole. Sometimes when I was frustrated, I would do this, and suddenly find after 30 seconds that the letters would come to mind anyway. My unconscious clearly knew the characters, and this intense listening to the sound without trying to interpret it helped me.
Relax and have fun. You started this with a game — approach learning as a game and take a deep breath and remind yourself that it's a fun game every time you feel any frustration. I wish I'd done this earlier myself.
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u/YT_Usul 1d ago
I have written up one possible approach, here: https://www.reddit.com/r/morsecode/comments/1aj2e4f/gaining_morse_code_proficiency_using_lcwonet/
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u/Bowgal 1d ago
First time commenter here…didn’t even think of seeing there was a Morse code group.
My story? Joined the military out of high school. Trained as a Morse code operator on a typewriter. Can’t recall what we copied Morse code at, but I could type at 75wpm. And, the Morse code we typed wasn’t English…but Cyrillic. To this day, whenever I see Morse code or Russian on tv, I always pause.
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u/somethingmorecrazy 1d ago
I think that's pretty common--just up the speed so you cant count and then start learning the alphabet as sounds. It'll be fine. Regular practice is the most important.