[CQ-Contest] CW Accuracy

Fri Sep 15 00:47:51 EDT 2006

The problem is that we old farts learned instant recognition to pencil/paper
and not to keyboards. Old habits are difficult to get rid of.
Add to that the decreasing memory quality and  it shows in the scores.
Michael 4X4KF

Clive Whelan wrote:

>I suspect, that for most of the respondents, the problems
>are two fold; certainly that is the case for myself.
>
>
>1. Lack of keyboard skills
>
>
>and/or
>
>
>2. Poor memory retention/ translation.
>
>
>re 1. For those of a certain age, keyboard operation was
>never an option. That was "work for women" as one of my
>former bosses told me, when he saw me sending my own telex
>on the Creed 444 ( ca. 197x). How wrong and misguided he
>was, not to say reverse sexist! So we came to keyboards,
>either via teletype machines and RTTY ( in my case) or later
>still in the era of personal computers. In either case we
>were self taught, and never learned the right way to use a
>keyboard. No matter how much practice we get now in
>contests- or e.g. sending emails like this- we will never
>become truly competent in the absence of professional
>tuition. Our younger brethren may also not have received
>professional tuition, but at least they had the significant
>advantage that they were exposed to keyboards at school,
>when their minds were more malleable. In my case I now have
>numbness and very poor co-ordination which compounds the
>problem; I may not be alone here.
>
>
>re 2. However, this I feel is the minor of the two problems.
>We learned to copy CW, quite naturally, by writing it down
>on paper, although at first we probably did not manage
>"joined up copy", which nevertheless followed quite soon
>afterwards. I suppose there must have been a time when there
>was a brain lag between copying the character, and writing
>it down, but frankly I have no recollection of this. Thus
>this became the de facto method of hard copy, and was done
>literally without thought. When copying to the  keyboard
>however, there is a finite brain lag in the  translation
>process, and in this instant there is an extra margin for
>error not associated with the ability to copy CW in any way.
>I firmly believe that age, and the "stress" associated with
>the translation to keyboard process, detract from the
>ability to retain  a callsign in the brain while typing it,
>thus resulting in a finite error rate. It is well known that
>even young people have difficulty in retaining character
>strings greater than 5/6 in length, e.g. telephone numbers,
>so when we are confronted with callsigns of the type
>HB9/9A9XXX/P it is no wonder that we struggle to get them
>into the keyboard. A technique I have used but not perfected
>is to repeat the callsign to myself in "voice mode". I don't
>do this out loud, but the virtual mouthing of the call does
>seem to help with retention. However this is yet another
>skill that needs to be learned. How this works exactly, I
>don't really know, but my best guess is that it places the
>data in a less volatile "register" of the brain, whence it
>may be retrieved at relative leisure. There is little doubt
>that the technique of "copying behind" would significantly
>aid the process, but unfortunately I never learned this as I
>was self taught at CW, and it is probably now too late.
>
>
>73
>
>
>
>Clive
>GW3NJW
>
>
>
>
>Something funny is going on. I honestly used to think that I
>was slightly
>above average. In other words, if there were 1500 entrants
>in a CW SS, my cw
>skills would be among the top 750. I always thought that if
>I was ever in a
>position to upgrade the hardware, then my scores would only
>get better from
>there. As if it would be a reciprocal thing. The more
>stations I could work,
>the more practice I would get, the better my CW would get,
>the more staions
>I could work. Repeat. As if that was the main thing holding
>me back. Lately
>it seems like I can't copy or type very well at all. Last SS
>my report was
>pretty bad. I do have MorseRunner, but no motivation. My
>memory is getting
>worse, too.
>--
>73, Craig Cook - N7OR in Sandy, OR
>============================
>"You should be ashamed of yourself"
>
>
>
>On 9/11/06, W4ZW <w4zw at comcast.net> wrote:
>  
>
>>
>>After reviewing a few of my past log UBN reports, I
>>    
>>
>decided to find out
>  
>
>>where I was busting calls.  So I started working out with
>>    
>>
>RUFZ-XP and made
>  
>
>>several interesting discoveries.  The first culprit is my
>>    
>>
>typing ability,
>  
>
>>or
>>lack there of.  I never learned touch typing and have
>>    
>>
>adopted the hunt and
>  
>
>>peck method until I feel fairly comfortable, but limited
>>    
>>
>by speed.
>  
>
>>I switched to computer logging completely about 15 years
>>    
>>
>ago, although I
>  
>
>>wrote programs to do computer logging on DEC, WANG,  and
>>    
>>
>DG minicomputers
>  
>
>>a
>>jillion years ago for FD and SS.  I'd never noticed a
>>    
>>
>large error rate
>  
>
>>until
>>studying my UBN's.  I have enough hearing loss in my left
>>    
>>
>ear at certain
>  
>
>>frequencies such that often sounds seem "muddled" and I do
>>    
>>
>miss calls when
>  
>
>>doing SO2R and have returned to basic SO1R because of it.
>>    
>>
>But I wanted to
>  
>
>>see exactly where I was making the errors and I discovered
>>    
>>
>several
>  
>
>>interesting things.
>>
>>My typing errors were the first and most obvious culprit
>>    
>>
>when I simply hit
>  
>
>>the wrong key. But I also discovered that I almost always
>>    
>>
>get the call
>  
>
>>right
>>if it's a "standard" call, that is a 1x3 or 2x3 or shorter
>>    
>>
>because I have
>  
>
>>it
>>in my head cache at speeds up to about 50wpm.    But if
>>    
>>
>it's a
>  
>
>>XX7/anything
>>I have a momentary mental blink and miss the complete
>>    
>>
>call.  Also
>  
>
>>sometimes
>>have a mental blink and a degree of error with the
>>    
>>
>Call/QRP.  And last, at
>  
>
>>speeds over 40wpm I mix the "S" and "H", and that from a
>>    
>>
>guy who was K4HHG
>  
>
>>for 40 years.  Also found certain "mental stops" with
>>    
>>
>repeated characters
>  
>
>>and certain  letters like "T", e.g. copy "UTU" as "VTU" or
>>    
>>
>just "TU".
>  
>
>>When I stir this all around with my poor typing, I can see
>>    
>>
>how my UBN is
>  
>
>>higher than I want.  I also think some of this has to do
>>    
>>
>with aging,
>  
>
>>because
>>I remember how clearly I could grab calls in my head when
>>    
>>
>I was younger
>  
>
>>(especially in my teens when my head cache was really BIG)
>>    
>>
>and putting
>  
>
>>them
>>down with a pencil.  I tried using a pencil with RUFZ and
>>    
>>
>discovered that
>  
>
>>my
>>accuracy did improve, but not enough to give up the
>>    
>>
>wonderful advantage of
>  
>
>>computer logging.
>>
>>Anyone else notice this aging by-product?
>>
>>Jon Hamlet,  W4ZW
>>
>>Casey Key Island, Florida
>>"A little piece of paradise in the Gulf of Mexico"
>>
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>>    
>>
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