Daryl Stout wrote to Roy Witt:

 RW{at}>> What do I know...I quit using morse the day I got my General
 RW{at}>> (c1978) and havn't looked back since. In fact, I joined with W5YI
 RW{at}>> to help stop the morse code requirements for licensing. Just
 RW{at}>> foolin' around with marc...

 DS>   I've had several other hams tell me that the only reason they
 DS> learned CW was to pass a certain license element, then they never
 DS> touched a keyer again.

That's true here. I could have passed the XC 20wpm test, but saw no use in
doing so because the technical part of that test was over my head.

 DS>   Now, that CW is no longer required, people are learning Morse Code
 DS> because they WANT TO, not because they HAVE TO. IIRC, just after the
 DS> CW requirement was removed, the phones at Vibroplex were ringing off
 DS> the wall, for people wanting keyers. A fellow local ham has one of
 DS> their "classic keyers", and he loves doing CW.

As does the HAM who elmered me back in the 1950s...and to think, it was I
who talked him into going to his FCC office in Missouri and taking the
tests back in the 1990s. He's now an XC and uses CW exclusively. The idea
was to get him licensed again and we could talk over old times on the air,
but I'm not about to do that using CW.

 DS>   I understand that one station in the northeast US, N2SEX, is one of
 DS> the best CW operators you'll ever work...funky callsign not
 DS> withstanding (hi hi).

So was the XC who gave me my 2nd Novice test back in the 70s. We were have
a discussion about that test afterwards when he burst out in laughter.
When asked what he thought was so funny, he said that it was something
that was said in CW on the radio he was listening to during our
conversation. That blew me away. Come to find out that he never wrote
anything down when he was on the air, except to make notes about the
content. That also blew me away.

 DS>   A former ham (now a SK) told me his secret to learning CW was to
 DS> "learn all the dirty words first". I laughed, and
admitted "Well, you
 DS> can't say it on the air, but if it helps, more power to you".

The guy above said not to learn it letter by letter, but to learn it word
by word. Each word has it's own sound, if the code is sent fast enough, He
finally admitted to reading 30-40 words/min...

 DS>   That was verified when I was listening into a Morse Code class done
 DS> by the Dallas Amateur Radio Club on Echolink via the W5FC-R repeater.
 DS> The first 4 letters they taught formed an expletive...to which I
 DS> thought "I'll be damned" (hi hi). But, when you looked at
the dot and
 DS> dash pattern, it made perfect sense. I've heard of hams sitting
 DS> around the restaurant table, telling dirty jokes in CW (hi hi).

8^)

 DS>   FWIW, I tried a 5 wpm CW test once, but failed. Had I filled in the
 DS> blanks, I probably would've passed it, but it's a moot point now.

During the 13wpm test, I had a friend sitting next to me who failed that
test. One of the questions asked was 'how many watts were used to make
contact'...the answer was 1 watt, but if you didn't hear it, you wouldn't
believe that to be the answer. I heard it and new that was a trick
question when my friend whispered to me, 'I put down 10 watts, I guess I
must have missed the zero.' When I told him it was 1 watt and he didn't
miss any zero, he was skeptical, until they told him that he failed the
test, showing him his incorrect answers. 8^)

         R\%/itt - Happy New Year 2013, Ya'all!


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