[TenTec] Copying CW in your head

[Peter A. Klein]

Many thanks to everyone who responded to my questions on copying CW in
one's head.  Many of the comments were also posted to the reflector, so
hopefully everyone who is interested in this topic got to see them.  Here's
a brief summary:

A lot of the comments were on the order of "just do it."  Have a lot of CW
QSOs, avoid other modes, try to do a bit every day.  Try to relax, don't
try to be perfect, don't try to "back up" and correct missed letters.  Copy
others' QSOs at speeds well beyond one's comfortable speed, just listen and
let it come.  Closing one's eyes may help, because it reduces input from an
unneeded (for CW) sense.  If you listen to CW while driving, closing one's
eyes is not recommended  :-)

Some people said to avoid distrations, a couple of others said that
learning to copy despite distractions can be useful.  One person said he
mentally projected the letters on an imaginary screen in his head, another
said that this actually diverted brainpower from the real task.

Several people said that sending at high speed helped prepare the ear and
mind for receiving at high speed.  This is interesting, because it goes
contrary to what everyone is advised when are *first* learning the code, so
I had never considered it.  One person mentioned sending "from your head,"
rather than from paper.  Another recommended mentally sending code to
yourself--for example, driving along, reading highway signs and imagining
the text on the signs in high-speed code.  

Jim, KH7M recommends the texts at two URLs:

    http://www.w5blt.com/highspeed.html

    http://www.joates.demon.co.uk/megs/N0HFF/contents.htm

...the first of which Jim wrote himself under his pre-vanity call.  The
second URL is an HTML book on CW, of which Chapter 7 is most oriented
towards head-copying.  There are good points about the mental processes
involved in CW in other chapters, comparison of various learning methods,
and some fascinating history.

It's very plain that learning the code to pass a code test--especially the
old FCC "one minute of continuous copy" standard--is *very* different from
reading CW in one's head as a quasi-language.

One interesting thing to ponder is how much CW is a talent, like musical
ability.  I suspect that almost anyone could be trained to do CW in the
13-20 wpm range, but it would take some much longer than others.  But the
folks who can do 40+ wpm, I suspect are like very talented musicians.

73 from KD7MW,

--- Peter
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