The Lure Of Morse

Since we’ve gotten into pandemic preparedness mode here, I’ve renewed my interest in radio. Several years ago, I got my technician class amateur radio license, but haven’t done much at all with it. The next step after the technician class is the general class license, which allows you to transmit on shortwave frequencies. One requirement for this license class is passing a Morse code receiving test, which takes a good bit of study, though the copying rate of the test has been reduced to a very slow 5 words a minute.

Despite its antiquarian aura, Morse code is very practical in the land of ham radio. Basically, it’s an incredibly efficient way of getting a signal out to the world if you don’t have much transmitting power or a good antenna setup. Since we live in a very small house and can’t exactly be erecting a 40’ antenna tower, that kind of describes my situation for the foreseeable future. There’s also the appeal of going lightweight and portable, as the Adventure Radio Society folks do.

5 words a minute may do for passing the test but it is not acceptable for actual communication. I’ve started studying using the Koch Method, where you start out learning two letters at a reasonably fast rate (15 wpm overall, with each character coming in at 20 wpm), and then add another letter when you master the characters you have so far. It’s aural reflex training—you bypass thinking about the letters (“oh, dot-dot-dot, let’s see, that’s ‘S’, right?)

Anyway, good Morse code operators routinely defeat expert texters in text messaging contests. If I ever get a cell phone, it’s going to be a Nokia Series 60 job, which is readily programmed (happily even in my favorite programming language, Python), so somebody has even whipped out a Morse texter for these types of phones.