Improving your Morse code

If you want to improve your Morse code you’ll need to practise. Think about a tennis player and the countless hours they spend on the court practising their ground shots, serves, volleys, and net game; or the golfer at a practice range hitting that 7-iron until 99 out of 100 shots travel 130 metres plus or minus. The same goes for musicians. The path to competence is paved with 30 minute practice sessions.

Improving your Sending

Make it a daily habit. After the morning coffee, schedule five or ten minutes of sending practice.

Ask a friend for feedback. Put a short note on your qrz.com profile that you welcome feedback.

Hopefully, most of us listen to CW at least once a week. My shack is also my office, so I have common frequencies running most days. (e.g. 7.025 Mhz, 7.028 Mhz, 7.032 Mhz)

Be aware of bad habits that easily creep into your sending. Typical examples include:

• Running together letters in your callsign, name or QTH – phrases or words you send are often prime candidates that may cause you to fall into bad habits.
• Another gremlin to watch for is bad ti min g. No th ing m akes it har der to enj oy relax ed cop ying than poo r t iming.
• Good character spacing, but running words together.
  Inadequatespacingbetweenwordscanmakecopyingcwmoredifficultthanitneedstobe.
• If you are using a paddle and electronic keyer, you are assured of excellent dit & dah formation – your failings will likely be spacing. Full Iambic keying and “squeeze” keying will help, but it needs a lot of practice.
• If you use a straight key, you need practice; try recording your sending and play it back. Ask others for honest feedback.
• It can be all too easy to send faster than you’re comfortable with; and this impacts the quality and consistency of your sending, and may also result in code being sent a little too fast for you to copy.
• If you’re sending too fast, it might sound to others (and feel for you) a bit like you’re running down a hill too fast… your sending becoming just a little sloppy with trips and occasional falls.
• We all have phones capable of recording… try recording your sending and then listening to it. How does the timing sound?

A really good habit is to send some pangrams prior to getting on air. A pangram is a sentence that uses all 26 characters of the alphabet. Consider it a “quick warm up session” prior to on-air operation. Just about every sportsperson and musician warms up before a performance; consider your on-air transmission a performance. Do it justice and warm up first.

There is an article explaining Pangrams on this website. Just enter “pangrams” in the search bar.

Receiving
There is only one way to achieve your goals when learning and copying CW.

Practise, practise, practise

Easy to say, harder to do. Right?

No. The hard part is establishing a routine and sticking to it. How many other voluntary routines do we follow simply because we find them easy, or requiring minimal effort…. Like surfing Facebook, or YouTube, or the web? Maybe we spend 15 minutes each morning having a coffee and reading the paper? Walking the dog, cat, chicken, sheep or unicorn?

If you are serious about mastering the code, you’ll find a way to build 15-20 minutes into your daily routine. Mobile phones offer all sorts of possibilities to integrate some learning into other routines… like walking the dog, cat, chicken, sheep or unicorn whilst listening to practice sessions. Maybe take a sandwich to work and spend the time doing your CW exercises whilst eating lunch?

Ditch the rubbish television soaps for eight weeks and replace with 45 minutes Morse code learning sessions. Or join CW Academy.

Book a 15-minute session twice weekly with a CW buddy; integrate learning CW into getting some on-air time.

Set a goal – two QSOs a day at least six days a week. Force yourself to either increase the speed a little and/or break into a conversation – even if it’s just telling the other op about your station, antenna or weather.

I could go on….

Wherever you are on the journey to learning Morse code, your only sure-fire way to success is daily practice. If you’d like an accountability buddy, just email me and we’ll find someone who is willing to work with you to maintain a rigid routine.

So… if you’re willing to commit and need some inspiration and structure, or just someone to provide moral support, reach out. Your best chance of success is to have someone who can be that little voice on your shoulder (or inside your head).