CW has always been a challenge for me since I was 7 (I’m 42 now). This was the age my late father (Silent key WA0VED) began the long, and what I would consider an arduous, journey to learning this, well, language. It started with a red and grey straight-key, and still to this day I have always gone back to learn on the straight key. Granted, now, sitting beside me on my desk as I write this, I have a 1945 Vibroplex Bug that needs some care to it. It does work, especially after cleaning the contact points, but now its down to taming the old Bug. But, where I’ve had my problems with CW and Code steams from, and what I imagine everyone else, is copying. Some folks can pick it up quickly while others, such as myself, struggle.
I did gain my Tech+ in late 2000, a few months after I got my Technician license in July of 2000. At the time, I had been sticking with voice with 6 and 10 meters. I may have gotten up to about 10 words a minute at the time, but it wasn’t a solid speed of sending or copying. After a few failed attempts with QSOs, I gave up. It was just too much.
That was until around Covid I started to try and relearn. And stopped again. This was also in conjunction with me starting and stopping going for my General.
Yet, last year, I knuckled down in September. First, it was going for the General. I went with Ham Radio Prep as I do better learning radio theory in a classroom setting with a good tutor at myside. It was how I learned and got my Technician: my father my guide. When I tested for my Technician, my dad tested for his Armature Extra. We both passed. But nearly 25 years without staying at HAM radio on a consecutive practice basis, and with my father shorted-to-ground, I had my challenge.
I tested and passed my General in October of last year.
In between studying for the test, and my other interests, I also restarted learning the code…and did it the wrong way by going back to the diagrams. Now when I talk with other operators wanting to learn and do CW, I whole heartly dissuade them from looking at the code but to hear it first.
My friend for going with character recognition has been Morse Mania. That was the big help. Once I got confident in instant character recognition—well, enough that knew them, but getting them click in the brain—I started down the path of copying callsigns and words.
A Story to Spark Something More…
Around the same time as I’m learning and gaining interest, a writer’s group I am in offered a Halloween challenge to write a short story to be read for our Halloween meet up. Somewhere I mind stuck on dits-and-dahs, watching the films The Final Countdown and Frequency (my wife loves that movie), I came up with a short involving a young kid copying a series of messages with random letters at his uncle’s house in Key West. His uncle coming in, and noticing how far off the legal band it was being sent, noticed it as a form of Enigma. The story then shifts to young kid copying an SOS distress message, then sending the reply, using his uncle’s callsign. Over the close to 8,000 word story, the kid receives and sends back and forth with a ship called Wolffe, until the signal goes dead.
The story was received well with my group, but it did something else for me.
I thought of the randomness that Enigma messages are, or for that matter, most encrypted messages: it would be a great way to get better practice in with copying. I sat out with learning Enigma, how the machine worked, and what the format of the messages where. Luckily, with a simple cursory search, there are a good bit of Enigma apps. The one I use the most is Enigma Zone for the PC.
The idea I had was to come up with Enigma messages, post the settings, and record me sending the message and post it a few of the HAM radio discord servers I am on, and see if anyone messages me back with the right decoded message. I would them send them a “QSO” image of what the message meant. The first one was of Ralphie form A Christmas Story due to the message say: BE SURE TO DRINK YOUR OVOLTINE.
But…I how do I record me sending a message without doing it on video?
Vail-Morse and the Vail Adapter
I had been working with Ham Radio Solutions Vband adapter, but I had also stumbled onto Vail-Morse, now run by KE6BOS (Brett). Brett would become very instrumental in the idea I had, and turned into something for better than what I had imagined.
With the Vail Adapter and its midi sidetone, I was able to record myself sending my first Enigma message. It took me close to a 100 tries to get it right. Just that session behind the key helped my sending, and very possibly my copying. It forced me to look ahead of the letters while I was sending the current character. I also knew my sending how to be 100% perfect due to the nature of Enigma. If one or a series of letters were off, or could be construed to be something else, it could garble half the message to the receiving operator.
After posting it, and explaining what I was looking at doing, Brett took the idea, researched Enigma, and created a channel on Vail-Morse to have the program send a weekly Enigma message with an Enigma simulator to decode the message.
Every week a Enigma message is posted with the pursuit of a second weekly message channel in the works to have a simple message, and a harder, more to the Enigma formatted messages to be decoded.
https://vailmorse.com/#Weekly%20Enigma
Shadow Enigma
This is where upping your CW game comes in. Brett didn’t stop just at the weekly Enigma message, but he created a game with points in receiving and decoding Enigma messages.
Enter Shadow-Enigma.
Shadow Enigma lets you choose the difficulty and speed to copy the Enigma message. Granted, these messages aren’t true to form Enigma messages, but the goal of Shadow-Enigma is to help in copying Morse Code. And from many users they have reported it has greatly helped their copying.
Shadow-Enigma is also a glimpse into many radio operators and listeners during WWII in copying these seemingly random messages. The difference is that you can replay the message while back then, you may only had one or two passes at it.
Spark-Watch
Continuing on this line of creating challenges to help copying Morse Code, the second part of my story sparked the idea of being a Maritime Listening station copying and relaying ship distress calls. Where Shadow Enigma lacks in sending numbers (Enigma didn’t have numbers on the machines, so numbers had to be spelled out in the messages), copying numbers of ship positions would fill that gap. I explained my idea to Brett, and he again came through with Spark-Watch.
The name is derived from the original wireless radios from the Marconi Company, using the spark-gap method to send morse code. Up until Continuous Wave signals were perfected and replaced the crude spark-gap method, spark-gap was the main radio type that ship and shore stations used. It was at the Marconi Company Wireless radio that sent out the first SOS message from the SS Slavonia, and of course the HMS Titanic disaster. Before SOS was CQD.
Spark-Watch uses both SOS and CQD, but the listener has to copy which one it is. Spark-Watch also uses the same design as Shadow Enigma, but the harder the challenge, the faster the code comes at you. Your objective is to copying the SOS or CDQ, the ships name, the nature of the distress, and the ship’s recorded position.
Its what the link says. For those, including very much me, who want to go from formulaic QSOs to rag chewing on the keys, Morse Story Time is the next step. Its simple, listen and copy a story (some are full novels) and answer the questions at the end to gain points. But again, just like Spar-Watch and Shadow Enigma, its more for the user to get better practice with copying Morse Code.
Other Tools, Including Sending Practice:
Vail-Morse offers other training tools, including links to a Morse Space Invaders game that requires the Vail Adapter to send code from dropping words or callsigns.
There are also a number of QSO simulators that can be used or without the vail adapter. I’ve been using the QSO simulator to do POTA QSOs the most as a listener. its helped a lot when doing actually POTA CW QSOs, though it doesn’t offer a different QSO message format. The AI QSO bot, however, does offer that, but is reliant on the Vail Adapter to send your QSO.
Just check out Vail-Morse and the training tab to find what can help you and your CW “Game.”
Also, check out the Vail Discord server for the new happenings, plus your input on current projects members are working on.