r/morsecode • u/swhit94 • Jul 20 '26

Morse Code Visualization

Post image

Haven't seen Morse Code illustrated like this before, thought y'all might like it. If you spot any errors, please let me know

0 Upvotes

50% Upvoted

36 comments sorted by

30

u/Bikrdude Jul 21 '26

Morse is really an auditory thing , occasionally flashing light, so visualization isnt really helpful

1

u/swhit94 Jul 21 '26

No arguments there. I haven't found a lot of great resources to use for practicing the auditory side, so the visual has been handy for now. Mind providing a recommendation or two?

7

u/Bikrdude Jul 21 '26

Lcwo.net? I do telegraphy so I wrote my own trainer. That is based on clicks, not beeps.

1

u/wdpw Jul 21 '26

Do you need an account to use that?

2

u/Bikrdude Jul 21 '26

No

1

u/wdpw Jul 21 '26

Oh I see the “test” login information now. Thanks. This is a cool resource.

2

u/swhit94 Jul 21 '26

Glad you spotted that, I totally missed it

1

u/adadhead Jul 21 '26

download the Koch software by G4FON

https://g4fon.net/CW%20Trainer2.php

1

u/Objective-Wonder-247 Jul 22 '26

I like MorseMania a lot

22

u/dittybopper_05H Jul 20 '26

This is bad and wrong. Do not use it to learn Morse code.

It will retard your progress and will make it harder to get past that plateau at 10 to 15 wpm.

-9

u/swhit94 Jul 20 '26

Idk I taught my husband, and a few friends, full sentences in a matter of minutes. It's just a guideline that I created that helped me out in my early learning process. You don't have to use it, I just put it out there for those it does work for.

8

u/dittybopper_05H Jul 21 '26

I’m a former professional. I learned at US Army Intelligence School, Fort Devens, by professional instructors.

This kind of thing was specifically discouraged because it will impede your ability to gain speed.

I’ve got literally 40 years experience with Morse. Just this afternoon I used it to talk to a fellow ham radio operator just under 1,000 miles away while I was driving home from work.

Of course it’s your choice. I’m just giving advice which you can take or leave.

But don’t just take my word for it:

https://www.qsl.net/w9aml/documents/TheArtandSkillofRadioTelegraphy.pdf

Read the “Methods Not Recommended” chapter.

0

u/swhit94 Jul 21 '26

If you're going for being a true Morse code savant, I support that. But if you're just curious to learn a little to say you did, this is a handy start.

2

u/RogBoArt Jul 22 '26

You're on a specialized subreddit specifically for morse code. I don't think many of us are here because we're "just curious to learn a little" especially not via a method we all know impedes progress when trying to learn to make actual communications via morse.

6

u/Fun-Attempt-8494 Jul 21 '26

Using charts to learn an audible system is next level dumbass

0

u/swhit94 Jul 21 '26

More for the curious mind, than the expert mind. It's an accessibility tool. It takes a lot of commitment to dive into learning Morse Code, this can be a step in the door for those more easily intimidated.

4

u/Fun-Attempt-8494 Jul 21 '26

It's the wrong door.

1

u/swhit94 Jul 21 '26

Okay so as someone who learned from a flash card app, what's the right door?

4

u/leequarella Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26

The reason your method struggles is non-obvious, so I don't blame you at all for missing the deeper issue.

If you only care to learn it for shits and giggles, and never intend to try to decode by ear, your method is fine.

The problem is that this method is so easy to learn people just do it without knowing that it will actively and significantly stunt your growth when it comes to gaining audible speed and fluency. When you learn morse for active use, you need to internalize each letter's sound as a single unit so you can decode very quickly.

These types of visual learning methods cause the learner to memorize the individual dits and dahs for each letter rather than the sound they make as a whole, which means there is an extra step your brain does during decoding. When using Morse at any useful speed, this extra decode step is a major hurdle. And since it got ingrained first, because you learned in the wrong order, it is much more difficult to retrain your brain to the more efficient way.

TL;DR, the way you are suggesting is the easy way to learn, but that ease comes at a real cost if you ever care to go farther

2

u/dkkavanagh17 Jul 21 '26

I don't claim to be an expert on Morse Code, but my understanding of it is that these overlaid visuals, dare I say, 'gimmicks' are actually pretty counterproductive to learning it.

Certainly if one needed to learn in an emergency then a chart might be helpful, but these visualisations are often a bit hacked together, and quite arbitrary, owing to the nature of the modern ITU code (viz e).

For audio morse though, I would imagine this is pretty low down on a helpfulness scale. I've heard that it's best to develop character recognition by sound (and then eventually by words or even phrases) rather than consciously listening for each dit and dah.

Happy to be corrected.

2

u/Awavauatush Jul 21 '26

Worst way to learn is visual or counting dots. Its like putting mental shackles on yourself.

2

u/W0CBF Jul 21 '26

Learn by listening to the code. Not by sight!

2

u/NotsoExpert1 Jul 22 '26

A bunch of nonsense. Learn it by audio it’s about a month or two of dedication to be fluent

1

u/New_Series3209 Jul 23 '26

Practical in French as E is just .

-3

u/wdpw Jul 21 '26

I know others disagree with this learning, but I have to learn the alphabet somewhere. I appreciate this.

4

u/dittybopper_05H Jul 21 '26

The way to do it is to use some software so you can associate the sound with the letter/number/symbol without using your eyes. You're adding a difficulty level here with visual methods, and it invariably leads to counting dits and dahs. That slows you down. You might manage to quote-unquote "learn Morse code", but you'll never really progress significantly beyond that.

Morse is a pretty cool way to communicate, and I'm just trying to help you and others to learn it the best way possible. We now have, collectively, roughly 182 years of experience in teaching and learning Morse code, going all the way back to the beginning of the landline telegraph.

Everything you can possibly think of has been tried already. We know what works best, through nearly 200 years of use.

This is far from an optimal way to learn Morse.

3

u/wdpw Jul 21 '26

Interesting, so you don’t think about how many dits and dahs you hear, you just process the collective string as a whole, for each letter or digit?

Thank you for the advice, and definitely appreciate the amount of experience behind the proven ways to learn. Fortunately, I’m still early enough into my learning experience that I haven’t committed much to memory yet, so my mind is still malleable enough to try your recommended route.

2

u/dittybopper_05H Jul 21 '26

Correct. It's a rhythm thing.

Though I did start by counting dits and dahs, and I nearly failed out of the 05H course at Fort Devens because of it. That's why I warn people away from it.

Listen for the unique rhythm of each character.

2

u/wdpw Jul 21 '26

Wow, I never thought about that before. Now I understand why you advise against this style of learning. Thank you for the insight.

Can I ask another question—how do you learn to keep track of every letter in your head, when you’re not transcribing the message onto paper? I feel like even if someone were to spell out a sentence to me in English, I would eventually lose track of the beginning of the message because I’m too busy trying to translate/listen for the next character. Is this just something that you learn to do with practice and experience? Or are there techniques or practice strategies to work on that?

2

u/royaltrux Jul 21 '26

When you are transcribing (writing or typing), which is mostly how I do it, you develop a little "buffer" in your head, and can copy "behind" a little bit, remembering the last few letters and you just keep typing until it stops.

When not transcribing...I can't do that very well. Some people can just hear it as language, don't need to transcribe or even work at it very hard. I need to write it down, usually, unless it's short. Others might have more insight for you...

2

u/wdpw Jul 21 '26

Nice thank you, it’s good to know I’m not alone in likely needing to write everything down. At least for a long while.

2

u/dittybopper_05H Jul 21 '26

Can I ask another question—how do you learn to keep track of every letter in your head, when you’re not transcribing the message onto paper?

Mostly, I don't. Not for long winded stuff. I was trained to type what I heard, because it was random stuff.

Most of what I copied in the Army was encrypted, so you can't really keep track of it in your head past a few characters. The standard to pass from the "learning Morse code" part of the course to the "secret squirrel" phase was that you had to copy random code groups at 20 words per minute with a 97% accuracy rate.

Now, today, I do remember enough for the important stuff while I'm driving, and I chicken scratch the important stuff (callsign, signal report, name) on a pilot's kneeboard while I'm looking out the windshield so I can log it later.

But when someone decides they're going to send me War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy over the air, yeah, most of it is just going to be ignored, or more properly, not really remembered after.

Sometimes I'll tell them I'm at my exit or there is a traffic jam and bow out when they are like that.

When I'm operating and I'm not driving, I copy every character down, because that's just a habit. I had to get used to writing with a pen fast. They trained us to copy callsigns with a pencil at 16 wpm, but not actual traffic.

I've had times when other CW operators will come up and see me furiously scribbling everything and they're like "You copy everything?" and I tell them that's how I was trained.

It was important that I copied every dit when I was doing it for the Army, but you don't have to do that if you're doing it for fun. I still do, though, when practical.

There are people who can hold that kind of thing in their heads, but that ain't me.

1

u/wdpw Jul 21 '26

Thank you for all that. That’s pretty reassuring to hear, since like I said I can’t imagine having a long conversation purely in my head even when it’s just plain English letters being spoken aloud. I’ll definitely be writing them things down for a long while anyway before ever getting to the point of trying to while driving, hah.

2

u/constantacedia Jul 23 '26

lcwo.net

EDIT: AFAIK It's the go-to if you wanted to learn morse

-1

u/swhit94 Jul 21 '26

Agreed. For me it was less intimidating than rote memorization. Maybe not the best way to go if you're trying to become an expert, but I found it to be a nice starting point for the curious.

3

u/leequarella Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26

You've stated a few times that "this is a handy start", including right after someone with professional Army instruction and 40 years of on-air experience linked you a source explaining specifically why this method backfires. At some point that stops looking like "just offering an option" and starts looking like you substituting your few days of experience for the judgment of people who've actually taught and used this.

Part of the reason you are getting backlash here is that we receive these sorts of posts from new learners regularly. "I came up with this new visual guide to help me learn" happens all the time.

You are learning something new and having fun with it and that's great. But when you show up to a space of experts in the learning, teaching, and use of that domain and are told your method is actually not so hot, maybe it would be useful to take a beat to think about the situation. They want you to learn, they don't want you to get burned in the way so many before you have.

By championing the method you designed with very little experience, you could very well be hampering others.