I'm learning Morse Code. It's hard getting started.
Amazingly, given that it's no longer required for Amateur radio, there is a lot of morse to be heard on the HF bands.
Last week I bought a key (pictured) on eBay. There is a ton of
software around to help and that seems to be a good way to go. For now, I'm using
Koch Method CW Trainer from G4FON along with the companion program KochRx.
In these programs it sends from a given number of letters and you type in what you hear. When you start going mad, you stop and it compares what you typed with what was sent and tells you how far you got before an error.
I'm keen to learn the code at high speed (but with big gaps for now) so I can scale up in the future.
What I'm looking for is software that:
- Teaches a character by playing the sound and showing (or speaking) the character
- Plays the sound and I type the character
- Rewards me if I get it right
- Corrects me when I get it wrong
- Reviews characters already learnt
- Repeat, adding more characters
So far I haven't found this, any pointers would be greatly appreciated.
When I learned to touch type, I did a course. It was tedious but the group helped me get through it. There's lots of on-air practice, but I'm no where near that stage yet.
This post was brought to you by the letters K, M and R. -.-, --, ._. (which is all I have so far).
As part of my elaborate procrastination about learning morse code I've started writing my own tutor program for MacOS X. So far it sounds out the text you type in a field, displaying the character it just played after the audio.
