Paul Kimbrel's Musing

Despite the rumors that the code requirement will be dropped for the General Class amateur radio license sometime this year, I’m bound and determine to get my General this month. That means I have to learn Morse Code.

My dad turned me on to this program called G4FON Koch Method Morse Trainer. It uses the Koch method of learning morse code. The basic idea is this: If you try and learn the letters by the “dots and dashes” and then listen at a slow speed, getting your speed up is painful. In fact, beyond about 10 words per minute (WPM), it’s basically impossible. Our brains just can’t look these letters up that fast.

So rather than start slow - you start fast! You start with two letters at the speed you want to go at. I choose the letters sounds at 20wpm with 10wpm spacing. Basically, you learn the sound of the letters - not the dots and dashes. When you can copy 5 minutes worth of those two characters with 90% correct or better, you add a letter. And then you continue until you have the whole thing.

Well, being the impatient man that I am (I only have 21 days to learn this as of now), I started cranking the number of letters up before I could really copy efficiently at where I was at. At first this wasn’t bad, but as I added more letters, I found myself rationalizing a slow down. I mean, heck, the test is 5wpm anyhow! But as I slowed it down - what did I do? I started listening for the dots and dashes. I thought I was doing well (I got up to 14 letters!), but I couldn’t get past those 14 letters. My copy was even getting sloppy - I changing lettters as soon as I wrote them down. I was second guessing my self. I was completely loosing any hint of knowing what letters were what. I was getting discouraged.

So, I went back to 5 characters - the place where I started slowing the speed down. I cranked the speed back up to 20/10 wpm, and I found myself listening to the sounds - not the components of the letters again. And you know what? These letters were the letters I could copy at 5wpms! Huh…

Here’s a few things I’ve learned so far:

1. Learning at a faster speed helps at a slower speeds - not vice-versa.
2. Starting a letter at a slower speed makes you listen to the dots and dashes - and that messes everything up.
3. When you check your work, you have to count those last second changes as a mistake. It doesn’t matter if you got it right in the end. If you wrote the wrong letter down in the first place - you reacted in error.

#3 is a huge one for me. I thought if I could get to the end and match my copy to what was actually sent - I was good! However, as I went along, those letters that I copied wrong and then changed, were the ones that stopped me dead in my tracks in mid-copy.

I have to learn to react to the sound properly, or I start “thinking” about what I have to write. When copying at 20+ words per minute, you don’t have much time, if any, to think. Even whe I start thinking things like, “boy, I’m hungery” or “what’s on TV right now?” - oops. I goof the copy.

Before this is all over, I may even learn to concentrate again!

Well, the first in about 12 years, that is. Here it is in all it’s glory:

It’s based on the “Quaker Oats” crystal set radio. I know, know - I used a generic Quaker Oats box, but I’m pretty sure it didn’t affect the sound quality… much. All I have to say is winding a coil around an oat box is practically impossible. Especially for someone with as little patience as myself. But I managed to get it done. Of course, I can only get one station with this bugger… WJBC. And I can get it without the coil. *sigh* Oh, well. It was good practice.

When I first built the thing, I had only used the coil, a diode, a resister, and the ear piece (courtesy of the XTal Set Society - since Radio Shack doesn’t stock radio stuff anymore). I heard something, but it was extermely faint. So, I built a small OP amp circuit using an LM386 integrated curcuit. With that, I was able to amplify the signal enough to hear it (and a few other AM stations in the background). Now, if only I get get the tuning to work. But I don’t think my coil has quite enough “finesse” to pull that off. I need to read up some more on toroid coils, I think.

Oh, yea…

And did mention, I’m getting into ham radio? Yep. Hopefully by the end of the month, I’ll have my General Class license. I’m struggling a bit with the morse code requirement, but I hope to have that before test time, March 26th. You’ll probably be seeing more ham radio posts in the next few months…

And why ham radio, do you ask?

When I was kid, I got into computers as my hobby. It was fun, I learned a lot, and eventually I made a carrier out of it. Well, now I could care less about putzing with computers when I get home. But I still love electronics and would like to keep messing around with technology. Well, my dad has been a ham for longer than I’ve been alive. About a month ago we went to go visit my parents, and my dad showed me his new rig. It’s a Yaesu FT-817. He had it hooked to his computer and was showing me how he could chat digitially with other hams over the air waves. No internet. No wire. Very cool. Suddenly, I found the hobby I needed - and wanted.

Now, growing up in the home that I did, radio was always there. But I had computers to play with and never got into the radio thing. I always went to the hamfests with dad to look for computer stuff, but in recent years, the hamfests have gotten back to their roots - radio. Well, my interest started to wain… a lot in recent years. Last year, we went to the mother of all hamfests - Hamvention in Dayton, OH. It was cool and all, but I wasn’t into the radio stuff and at the end, it was one of those “that was fun, for a single visit” moments. But this year is different. Why? The one thing I never liked about going to hamfests was feeling like a foreigner. I had no call sign and no interest in radio.

Well, this year’s different. I can’t wait to go to Hamvention. And by golly, I’m going to have that call sign when I get there! If only I can get this morse code down… I suppose I ought to get back to it.