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Learning To Talk Again
Mar. 19th, 2012 03:09 pmNo, don't worry, I haven't lost my voice.
Back in 1968 when I was first licensed for amateur radio, you had to be able to send and receive Morse code at 5 words per minute in order to get the most basic license. For the higher level licenses you had to be able to send and receive progressively faster. It took a bit of effort to learn Morse code, but I wanted to get on the air badly enough that I stuck it out and eventually was able to do 5 WPM . . . then 10 . . . then 15 and eventually got pretty good.
I did all that with a "straight key." When you look at people sending Morse code in movies, that's the kind of key they almost always use. (Much like the one in the picture above. They almost always use it wrong, too, but that's a different story.) From that day to this I've almost always used a straight key for Morse. I do own a semi-automatic keyer that allows you to send faster code, like the one below, but the straight key was always my go-to piece of gear where Morse code was concerned.
Last week at the ham radio swap meet my daughter and I went to I got an electronic keyer paddle:
I've been intrigued by these for many years but never owned one because I never had an electronic keyer to use it with. Straight keys are wonderful and highly individual – you can often tell who you're "talking" to just by the sound of their Morse code – but they limit the speed at which you can send. The best straight key operators might be able to push 30 WPM, but that would be really bookin' it. Something like 20 WPM is more of the norm.
The semi-automatic keyer was designed to make it possible to send faster code. When you push the knob with your index and middle finger, you get a continuous tone, much like you would if you pushed down on a straight key. But if you hit the flat paddle with your thumb, you got a series of dots. The speed of the dots is controlled by a weight at the end of the long pendulum arm in the picture above. Closer to your hand makes for faster dots. The dots form perfectly, but there's still a bit of opportunity for individual "fist" when sending the dashes.
About the time I got into ham radio advances in solid state technology were getting to the point where electronic automatic keyers were becoming affordable. An automatic keyer automatically forms both the dots and dashes, and controls the inter-element spacing as well, so your dits and dahs are perfectly formed. A good operator can send perfect Morse (sadly at the expense of individuality), and with practice can send it as fast as he can copy it – potentially up to 70 WPM and beyond, after which the dits and dahs run together in the human ear.
The radio I bought a couple of months ago has a keyer built into it, so I decided I needed a set of paddles so I could learn to use the keyer. The type of keyer above – which is the exact model I got, at about 30% of what it would have cost had I bought it new – is known as an "iambic" keyer. If you press the left paddle, it makes dots, just like a bug. If you press the right paddle, though, you get a string of perfectly formed dashes. And if you press both at the same time, you get a dot followed by a dash. Di dah, di dah, di dah for as long as you hold them. This pattern sounds like the meter of iambic poetry, hence the term "iambic keyer".
In theory it should be simple to operate. For instance to make a "C", which sounds like "dah di dah dit", you would press the right paddle, then the left, then the right, then the left. Except that "C" includes an iamb in the middle – "dah di dah dit" – so you can key it as "right, both, left." But here's the tricky part: If you – well, if I – don't release the paddles properly, I can end up with an extra "dit" at the end of a letter. You might not notice this with a "C", which has the dit at the end anyway, but with a letter like "X" – "dah di di dah" – that ends in an iamb, if I don't release just right I end up with "dah di di dah dit". That's a slash mark, and not at all what I intended to send.
Fortunately for me my radio has a code practice mode that I can use to send code without embarrassing myself on the air. I have been having a great deal of trouble getting my letters right. This can be troublesome if, for instance, I'm sending my callsign, which really needs to be right. I've had to slow down to 10 WPM – about where I was after I'd been on the air for six months or so – and work hard to get the letters right. There's little that turns a ham who enjoys Morse code off faster than someone who can't send properly, and once I get back on the air again I don't want to be that guy.
In some ways it's like recovering a lost motor skill, or learning to talk again. I know I can do it. I know what results I'm supposed to achieve. Getting my brain and body coordinated to get those results is the tricky part. Or maybe it's like learning to play an instrument. The banjo wasn't all that easy when I first started playing it, and some days it still seems like a challenge, but I'm better than I was when I started nine years ago.
"That which we persist in doing becomes easier, not that the task itself has become easier, but that our ability to perform it has improved."
Back in 1968 when I was first licensed for amateur radio, you had to be able to send and receive Morse code at 5 words per minute in order to get the most basic license. For the higher level licenses you had to be able to send and receive progressively faster. It took a bit of effort to learn Morse code, but I wanted to get on the air badly enough that I stuck it out and eventually was able to do 5 WPM . . . then 10 . . . then 15 and eventually got pretty good.
I did all that with a "straight key." When you look at people sending Morse code in movies, that's the kind of key they almost always use. (Much like the one in the picture above. They almost always use it wrong, too, but that's a different story.) From that day to this I've almost always used a straight key for Morse. I do own a semi-automatic keyer that allows you to send faster code, like the one below, but the straight key was always my go-to piece of gear where Morse code was concerned.
Last week at the ham radio swap meet my daughter and I went to I got an electronic keyer paddle:
I've been intrigued by these for many years but never owned one because I never had an electronic keyer to use it with. Straight keys are wonderful and highly individual – you can often tell who you're "talking" to just by the sound of their Morse code – but they limit the speed at which you can send. The best straight key operators might be able to push 30 WPM, but that would be really bookin' it. Something like 20 WPM is more of the norm.
The semi-automatic keyer was designed to make it possible to send faster code. When you push the knob with your index and middle finger, you get a continuous tone, much like you would if you pushed down on a straight key. But if you hit the flat paddle with your thumb, you got a series of dots. The speed of the dots is controlled by a weight at the end of the long pendulum arm in the picture above. Closer to your hand makes for faster dots. The dots form perfectly, but there's still a bit of opportunity for individual "fist" when sending the dashes.
About the time I got into ham radio advances in solid state technology were getting to the point where electronic automatic keyers were becoming affordable. An automatic keyer automatically forms both the dots and dashes, and controls the inter-element spacing as well, so your dits and dahs are perfectly formed. A good operator can send perfect Morse (sadly at the expense of individuality), and with practice can send it as fast as he can copy it – potentially up to 70 WPM and beyond, after which the dits and dahs run together in the human ear.
The radio I bought a couple of months ago has a keyer built into it, so I decided I needed a set of paddles so I could learn to use the keyer. The type of keyer above – which is the exact model I got, at about 30% of what it would have cost had I bought it new – is known as an "iambic" keyer. If you press the left paddle, it makes dots, just like a bug. If you press the right paddle, though, you get a string of perfectly formed dashes. And if you press both at the same time, you get a dot followed by a dash. Di dah, di dah, di dah for as long as you hold them. This pattern sounds like the meter of iambic poetry, hence the term "iambic keyer".
In theory it should be simple to operate. For instance to make a "C", which sounds like "dah di dah dit", you would press the right paddle, then the left, then the right, then the left. Except that "C" includes an iamb in the middle – "dah di dah dit" – so you can key it as "right, both, left." But here's the tricky part: If you – well, if I – don't release the paddles properly, I can end up with an extra "dit" at the end of a letter. You might not notice this with a "C", which has the dit at the end anyway, but with a letter like "X" – "dah di di dah" – that ends in an iamb, if I don't release just right I end up with "dah di di dah dit". That's a slash mark, and not at all what I intended to send.
Fortunately for me my radio has a code practice mode that I can use to send code without embarrassing myself on the air. I have been having a great deal of trouble getting my letters right. This can be troublesome if, for instance, I'm sending my callsign, which really needs to be right. I've had to slow down to 10 WPM – about where I was after I'd been on the air for six months or so – and work hard to get the letters right. There's little that turns a ham who enjoys Morse code off faster than someone who can't send properly, and once I get back on the air again I don't want to be that guy.
In some ways it's like recovering a lost motor skill, or learning to talk again. I know I can do it. I know what results I'm supposed to achieve. Getting my brain and body coordinated to get those results is the tricky part. Or maybe it's like learning to play an instrument. The banjo wasn't all that easy when I first started playing it, and some days it still seems like a challenge, but I'm better than I was when I started nine years ago.
"That which we persist in doing becomes easier, not that the task itself has become easier, but that our ability to perform it has improved."
