Why learn Morse Code?
Why learn morse code you may ask. Well here’s one person’s thoughts, and seeing as I’m quoting all below (excerpted from http://www.barc.org/2005/sparc_apr.pdf), he’s quoting ZL1AN, so that makes two, and I’m looking forward to when this works for me:
Morse Therapy
– Dr. Gary Bold, ZL1AN; excerpted by Eric Falkof, K1NUN
There was a magazine devoted to the preservation and glorification of Morse Code, Morsum Magnificat
(www.morsum.demon.uk).
Excerpting an excerpt from Number 41, August, 1995, I found this article that summarized my feelings about CW.
“…I know that if I go to bed now [after a stimulating period of intense thought and writing], I’ll just lie awake and the ideas I have to propound in the morning will rush madly about, echoing and muttering in my brain. My solution has always been to fire up the TS-520, limber up the Brown Brothers paddle, put on the cans and exchange CW for a while with someone on 20 metres. After a while the Morse begins to decode itself automatically, and little ASCII strings march quietly and effortlessly through my head.
My pulse-rate slows, and the network theorems and Fourier transforms of my professional life go away. I have almost become one with the radio, a bionic post-processor tacked on the end of the audio chain. CW is the purest form of communication I know, a ‘mind-to-mind’ linkage. The words appear right inside my head, words that were never spoken; uncorrupted by accents, verbal peculiarities, oddities of vocal intonation. They leave no room for other thoughts. Almost like a form of meditation. Very therapeutic. After thirty minutes of that, my metabolism has been slowed right down and I am relaxed. I can go to bed and sleep comes.”
by Gary Bold – ZL1AN.
Gary’s website http://www.physics.auckland.ac.nz/staff/geb/loads.htm has some excellent articles but the one I use most is his Morse tutoring program that, very sensibly, works most on the characters that are the least frequent and the hardest to learn and has some subtle and ingenious features that has bought me back to it year after erractic year, until I can finally copy code off the air. The program is called NZART Morse Tutor – I recommend it highly.
Giovanni – ZL2GX
