AmateurRadio.com

It’s a long time since I worried about ‘improving my morse’. It’s not that it’s superb or anything, but it’s more than adequate for what I want to do with it. There’s not much that I hear on the air that I can’t copy – although I have a sneaking feeling that speeds in the international CW contests are creeping higher, and I have to listen to some calls a bit closer than I used to!

But I was having an interesting chat with Ian, G4WUH this morning – prompted by a comment of mine that the mobile rig I’m trialling in the car this week, the Yaesu FT1900E has a built in Morse trainer. Haven’t tried it yet, but can see it would be good to have running whilst you were in the car.

It was interesting talking to Ian this morning about improving morse speed. Ian’s background is a professional radio officer who was trained to use morse. Ian said that one of the ways to improve your speed and competency is to listen to as much morse as you can – for example, have the rig running whilst your watching TV or reading. It’s almost as if the subconscious brain starts to process it and it becomes a ‘background process’.

This will help you if you want to be able to send/receive morse at the same time as doing something else. I CAN send morse and talk at the same time, but it’s not easy AND I’m inclined to forget what I said…!!