The Letter G, The Number 5

I’m a little bit more than halfway through the project of learning the 43 main characters in the Morse code set. I’m now working on adding the number 5. In the Koch method which I’m using, you add a character at a time to the set you already know and practice with the new set until you reach an accuracy of 90%. It’s interesting how adding just a single character causes my overall accuracy to drop and I have to go through a whole new round of practice, rewiring a few neurons.

It is now worthwhile for me to listen to and try to copy real live Morse code conversations. It has to be pretty slow code for me to have any success at all, and since I have many more characters to learn I expect a lot of trouble. It is good practice though. Today on 10 meters I was hearing a couple of operators having a good long ragchew sending slow code. It was heartening—they must both be beginners.