[UK-CONTEST] CQ WW CW operating techniques

[Ron Price]

My main interest is VHF contesting but I like to have a go at CQWWCW just to 
improve my limited (i.e. pathetic) cw skills.
I am full of admiration for those ops who can effortlessly read high speed 
morse, I struggle with anything above 15wpm!
I have tried many times over the years  to improve my copying speed but to 
no avail.
I think I am suffering from what I can only describe as morse dyslexia and 
wonder if anyone else has the same problem.
I'm fairly OK with the rythymic characters like C,F,L etc but struggle with 
S,H and 5 when sent at speed.
So Slovenian stations are paticularly difficult to cope with at speed and 
any other call starting with S or H.
I can listen to the call four or five times and still not be 100% certain 
that I have copied it correctly and frequently have to give up.
I have a slight hearing problem which obviously doesn't help in 
distinguishing clearly between the number of dits but I don't think that 
this is the main problem.
It seems more to do with a sluggish response by my brain and slow processing 
of the received information.
In a similar vein I can remember struggling to learn French at school.
Easy enough to memorise the vocabulary and string a sentence together or 
translate text but I found it extremely difficult to translate the spoken 
word quickly enough to have a conversation.
I think my brain would translate word by word instead of listening to a 
whole phrase and is now probably doing the same thing in reading morse.

So does anyone else have a similar problem, and have you found a cure for 
it?
Also are the high speed ops good at learning languages.

Best wishes to all,

Ron, GW4EVX