
Why I'm Learning Morse Code - bkanber
http://burakkanber.com/blog/why-im-learning-morse-code/
======
toddrew
I spent nine years as a naval communicator and am fluent in morse. It's been a
few years so I would definitely need a bit of practice to get back up to 12
words a minute on a flashing light.

I can speak three languages and morse was similar to learn. From the first day
of training they gave us sheet of paper with the alphabet and the morse
translation and told us to memorize a couple of letters. Then they sent us
outside to spend hours staring at a flashing lightbulb.

When you recognize a letter your writer (someone with a clipboard standing
facing you and away from the light) would write it down, and when you didn't
recognize the letter you said "MISS".

The first day was spent saying "MISS... MISS... MISS..." It was extremely
frustrating, the same way being immersed in a new language can be. It felt
useless... as if I would never get it. Every day we'd spend the morning
staring at the light, and little by little we started to get more letters.

Once we mastered it (100%) they would turn up the speed and we'd be back to
where we started... "MISS... MISS... ECHO... MIKE... MISS... MISSS..." until
we perfected that speed and were moved up again.

It took about three months of daily practice to get up to the military's
standard.

I catch myself years later spelling out words in morse in my head.

~~~
bkanber
I love anecdotes like this. Were you taught Morse purely visually, with the
flashing bulb? Do you find it easier to watch a bulb or to listen to a tone?

~~~
toddrew
It was always visual. It seemed useless at the time, spending hours out in the
pouring rain on a ship, sending a message with a flashing light to another
ship, but they always reminded us that even with all our technology and
cryptography, flashing light is still the most secure method of close ship-to-
ship communications because it's directional when using focused light.

~~~
bigiain
Ahhh, the days before a $250 quadcopter existed to provide a plausible attack
vector.

I wonder if Navy personnel are flashing base64 (base36?) encoded GPG encrypted
Morse code messages to each other?

~~~
toomuchtodo
Ship to ship laser communication fixes that :) Good luck finding the beam.

~~~
bigiain
Dust, mist, and/or Rayleigh scattering means I wouldn't need to be in the
beampath to "see" it, but I guess if you've solved the problem of aiming a
collimated laser beam from a moving ship to another moving ship, and reliably
hitting the "receiver" at the far end, you can probably do it at low enough
power levels to make that very hard…

~~~
toomuchtodo
Or do it with infrared.

~~~
bigiain
Doesn't help - the quadcopter's cameras don't _need_ to be only sensitive to
the human-visible spectrum.

(having said that, Rayleigh scattering is frequency dependant, if I recall my
high school physics correctly, IR will scatter lees than visible light – I
doubt thst matter though, in ship-to-ship communication there'd be more than
enough mist/water in the air to scatter enough IR for a suitable camera to see
the beam)

------
grandalf
I've been licensed as a ham radio operator since I was a kid (had an odd,
early fascination with radio) and recently got back into it a few years ago.

I find using morse code extremely relaxing b/c it taxes your perceptual system
in a way that is fairly uncommon in today's world. Either b/c it is being sent
very fast or b/c of a weak signal and ionospheric noise, it's a "full brain"
immersion exercise that leaves me feeling relaxed and contented (yes I know it
sounds a bit odd).

I recommend it highly. Even for those not interested in radio, there are
competitions for high speed morse (it's big in eastern Europe)... check out
some of the training software:

[http://fkurz.net/ham/qrq.html](http://fkurz.net/ham/qrq.html)

and

[http://www.rufzxp.net/](http://www.rufzxp.net/)

Of course, real ham radio contests offer the best combo of adrenaline and
strategy...

------
jliechti1
>> This brings me to my fascination with Morse code. Granted, learning Morse
code today may be a futile exercise. After all, I don’t know a single person
who speaks it!

From what I understand, ham radio operators still use morse code, although
they phased out the requirement to be proficient in Morse code somewhat
recently. So I don't think it is completely futile to learn.

"Demonstrating a proficiency in Morse code was for many years a requirement to
obtain an amateur license to transmit on frequencies below 30 MHz. Following
changes in international regulations in 2003, countries are no longer required
to demand proficiency.The United States Federal Communications Commission, for
example, phased out this requirement for all license classes on February 23,
2007."

Link:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio)

Ham radio operators also perform duties in emergency situations, including
disasters such as Hurricane Katrina.

"More than a thousand ham operators from all over the U.S. converged on the
Gulf Coast in an effort to provide emergency communications assistance.
Subsequent Congressional hearings highlighted the Amateur Radio response as
one of the few examples of what went right in the disaster relief effort."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio_emergency_communi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio_emergency_communications)

~~~
bkanber
You're 100% correct. There is definitely an amateur radio community out there,
and many of them are fluent in Morse. I guess I was just trying to say that
nobody in my "natural" social circles knows Morse. But if I start hanging out
with the right types of people, I'm sure I could communicate in dahs and dits
all day!

------
zw123456
If you think Morse code is cool, and it is, what is say is cooler, in my very
humble and probably worthless opinion is this;
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu,The](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu,The)
Inca, over 500 years ago, encoded information in binary format using knots on
a rope. Think about that. Cool, I think. What do you think?

~~~
vanni
Working link:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu)

------
xradionut
Ex-ham and ex-military radio operator/tech here.

Morse code, (CW), is a semi-valuable skill for radio operators, especially
hams that do HF and weak signal work. It takes experience, but at a certain
point the letters become words and the words become phases. It's no longer a
requirement for a amateur radio license, but it's still used and useful. (If
you want to learn, I suggest the Koch method.)

With the advance of radio technology, especially computers, DSP and SDR,
digital modes modes other than CW have better performance. You can decode a
whole band of signals digital/CW with the combination of a SDR receiver and
software on a decently powered computer.

But the advantage of CW is that you can use really "primitive" inexpensive
radios as transmitters and flexible humans as encoders/decoders.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
And as a teenager with almost no money this was important to me. I built the
classic "Tuna-tin Two" transmitter from the schematic I found in the high
school library and most of my money went to buying the $15 brass and plastic
transmitter key from some (probably long defunct) store in downtown Brooklyn,
NY.

------
rdl
I'm not really into morse/CW, but I'd strongly encourage people to try out ham
radio. You can buy an adequate radio for $31 on Amazon
([http://www.amazon.com/BaoFeng-UV-5R-136-174-400-480-Dual-
Ban...](http://www.amazon.com/BaoFeng-UV-5R-136-174-400-480-Dual-
Band/dp/B007H4VT7A)) and can get licensed in about 2-4 hours for $0-30.

There was a period of maybe the 1980s-2000 where radio was dying (it was all
old people who were defending their turf), but in the past 13 years it seems
to have really turned around -- more activity on the 2m/440 HT scene, disaster
stuff, etc. You can do crazy things like run 1500W wifi. Operate RC. Work
space stations (satellites, the ISS, etc.) Weird propagation stuff (sunspot
related, meteors, the moon...).

The only lingering problem I have with amateur radio is the ban on crypto, but
you can get around that by developing encrypted protocols but publishing the
keys in routine use, or moving the equipment to non-ham bands with secret keys
later.

~~~
grandalf
I agree with this except would encourage anyone interested to check out HF
communication before investing even $30 in VHF :)

~~~
rdl
VHF (2m) is going to be vastly more useful for emergency communications than
HF in most urban areas, and for people who live in apartment buildings, etc.,
VHF is going to be a lot easier to actually use. I'm using a Yaesu 8800 mobile
in my car now so I can cross-band repeat UHF to VHF as well, which would
probably work pretty well for disaster communications.

(I'm personally most interested in UHF/EHF, myself, mainly satellite and point
to point. I ran an iDirect TCP/IP Ku-band commercial/government/military
network for a few years, and would love to buy some space segment on Ka band
or possibly X and get back into it at some point. But I don't have a
home/office with space for a dish farm right now, nor the $1-5k/MHz to lease
transponders.)

If I had the ability to put up a tower or even a patio for antennas, I'd
probably get a home HF station, true.

~~~
VLM
google for "hf mobile" or just ask at a nearby club meeting, there's enough
people doing HF mobile that surely someone will give you a demonstration.

I have a "trailer hitch mount". So I can install or remove whatever I want,
relatively easily and quickly. Its a slight step up from the magnet mount
technique. Using the quick disconnect on the antenna I can stick a 5/8th wave
2M vertical on if I want, or a shortened 20M hamstick-alike, or whatever I
want.

My favorite part is my neighborhood has enough RF smog to make HF operation
basically impossible (even weak signal 6M sometimes), but a RF silent park
parking lot is only a short drive away. This tends to make up for the inherent
disadvantages of a small mobile HF installation.

You don't need to start with a $500 all weather autotuner or $700 screwdriver
antenna and elaborate mounting plans... a simple $20 stick-type on a temporary
magnet is good enough to see what its like, or basically "free" if a local
will loan you some gear to see what its like (weaksignal VHF+ rovers are like
that, but some HFers are like that too).

Also its a lot harder and more expensive to build an installation that will
survive snow and thunderstorms at 85 MPH down the interstate and survive for
years outside 24x365 than to park somewhere and slap a magnet mount on the
roof and run the cable thru an open window... you'd never drive around like
that, but you don't have to, so .. don't. It also cures the ignition noise
puzzle... shutting off the engine in a parking lot tends to eliminate ignition
noise pretty effectively LOL. Only operating while parked tends to eliminate
the "distracted driving" problem too.

Like all things in ham radio, if motivated and knowledgeable you can do quite
a bit quickly for free, or you can spend years and thousands if you want. Both
are fun.

I found this all very entertaining when I was living in the apartment
building.

The other advice I have is keep everything in a big plastic bin, so you don't
forget the radio 12 volt power cable at home, or forget your logbook, or
whatever else you need. And when you come home, throw the full bin in a corner
of the apartment until next time.

------
unoti
There are practical reasons to learn it, if you do radio operations. A morse
signal doesn't require the same bandwidth that a voice signal requires, so
you're able to focus the power of the transmitter into a tighter bandwidth,
and broadcast with more power than a voice signal. In addition, you can
understand the information in a morse signal in the presence of much more
interference than you can understand a voice signal. So it's actually quite
practical when doing radio operations to use morse, even today.

~~~
16s
In many cases, you need only a few watts (5 or less) and with a good antenna
can transmit globally.

------
Todd
I learned Morse Code as a 12 year old while working towards my ham radio
license. It was a challenge, especially getting to 13 WPM. The 20 WPM
requirement of the Extra class was the main reason I didn't go for that one at
the time.

Even to this day, over two decades later, I can still generate and recall
Morse (albeit slowly). This is one reason I urge young people to study
something meaningful and lasting while they're still in school. I wish I had
an adult who had told me that when I was young. I still know a lot about
electronics, RF, antenna design, etc. but I wish I had internalized
mathematics fundamentals or a foreign language instead. I still believe that
one reason Richard Feynman was so facile with physics and mathematics was
because of the notebooks he and his friend kept while they were kids.

------
capkutay
Cool article! "Code" by Charles Petzold[0] talks about morse code while
covering ways that we encode data. May be a good read for anyone interested in
this topic.

[0]: [http://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-
Softwa...](http://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-
Software/dp/0735611319)

------
RougeFemme
I learned Morse Code as a Girl Scout and became fluent for the intellectual
challenge. I'm definitely no longer fluent but could get by in an emergency
with a quick refresher.

------
jlgaddis
Like many of the others in the thread, I first learned CW in order to upgrade
my ham license (I started as a "No-Code Tech" and wanted HF privileges, which
required passing a Morse Code exam).

> As you develop proficiency in receiving–or “copying”–Morse, you start
> hearing the characters rather than the dashes and dots.

I was attempting to explain this to someone else a long time ago and they had
trouble really understanding what I meant until I described it another way --
think about how toddlers first learn to read. They initially begin by learning
each individual letter, then how a couple letters in a specific order make a
specific sound and form different words.

As your reading comprehension increases, you no longer read letter by letter.
Instead, your brain recognizes a sequence of letters as words. As you are
reading this post, you are reading _words_ , not the individuals letter that
compose them.

When trying to increase the speed at which you can "copy" Morse Code (which is
done simply by reducing the space (time) between characters), you stop hearing
the dits and dahs and instead learn to recognize individual letters. After a
while, you'll even begin to recognize (some) words just by their sound.

Past the age of 17 or 18, I've never "used" Morse Code for anything practical
but it is still stuck in my brain and I can still "copy". At least I know that
if I were to ever become paralyzed and unable to speak or move my appendages,
I could at least still communicate with others (by "blinking" the dits and
dahs).

------
Niten
I got an early start in morse code thanks to my grandfather, who was a Navy
radioman in World War II and later became a ham operator.

Sadly I never got my ham license, but it was my grandfather's obsession with
radio which got me into electronics and, ultimately, software engineering. I
still practice coding now and then, and morse is my go-to "hello world" for
playing with new microcontrollers:

[https://github.com/markshroyer/msp430-morse/blob/master/mors...](https://github.com/markshroyer/msp430-morse/blob/master/morse.ino)

------
danso
It's too bad we don't teach this as part of language development at the
primary school level. As someone who's tried to teach programming to lay
persons, I can't help but think that having first-hand practical knowledge of
how language can be encoded in a kind-of-binary (quinary, according to
Wikipedia) system would be an extremely useful abstract concept to have in
mind.

It's certainly more useful than learning cursive.

------
macleodan
Morse is not all in the past tense, as you write.

I have learnt it, a bit, for amateur radio, where it is still used. There are
lots of wee applications for it too, like showing status messages on a small
electronic device using a single LED.

There have been times I have wished more people know it, for example for
communicating with light accross a mountain valley, or communicating
underwater.

------
xb95
In amateur radio, the characteristics of someone's CW (morse code) is called
their "fist". I used to be able to do 5 WPM and one year I participated in
field day (the annual ham competition to contact as many people as you can,
etc) with it -- that year was magical because I used morse code for my first
time to talk to someone. The feeling of dits and dahs coming across the
airwaves actually being communication from somewhere far away? It was
brilliant.

So: kudos for learning an aging and mostly deprecated form of communication.
Some folks still do it for hobby (I've lost all skill by this point), and I
highly recommend the experience.

If nothing else, find a local ham group and go poke around in late June and
see if they're doing anything for field day. It's worth checking out.

~~~
hyperbovine
I'm not sure if deprecated is the right word. When the zombie invasion comes,
I do not feel confident in my ability to get the cellular network back up
running. I could easily build a spark gap transmitter though, using spare
parts that can be found anywhere and high-school level electrical engineering.
In seriousness, it seems somehow foolish to deprecate an extremely reliable,
cheap and time-tested form of communication. That said, I never got far in my
own attempts to learn Morse code :-)

------
bkanber
If any of you are already fluent in Morse, I'd love to hear from you! Were you
able to hear full words or phrases "natively"? Did you ever have the
experience of being able to identify the person on the other end merely by
accent?

~~~
lutusp
First I want to answer one of your other questions -- could a skilled Morse
operator identify a person by his sending style, what we called his "fist".
The answer is yes, absolutely. But there's more to it than that -- each CW
(continuous wave) transmitter had different characteristics, in the days when
most of them were built by their operators -- some of them changed frequency
slightly during each dash, some of them had noticeable clicks caused by too
fast a transmitter activation and deactivation around each Morse element --
these helped one identify a specific operator along with his personal sending
style.

A few years ago, about the time that the FCC abandoned the code
sending/receiving requirement, I assumed that CW was dead. But lately,
listening to the ham bands, I see there's a surprising amount of CW activity
still present.

> Were you able to hear full words or phrases "natively"?

Over time one begins to hear entire words, especially at high sending rates.
This is especially true for common words, words that are part of every contact
... example "Name is (name)": "-. .- -- . .. ... .--. .- ..- .-.."

Here's a sample:

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/ad6oibxzhzk4rvy/morse_example.mp3](https://www.dropbox.com/s/ad6oibxzhzk4rvy/morse_example.mp3)

As this example MP3 shows, in modern times we can avoid the quirks of manual
keying by letting a computer create perfectly shaped Morse characters for us.
:)

~~~
jloughry
I encourage any hacker to take a look some time at the beautiful 'bugs' still
(!) made by Vibroplex [1].

I have wanted to learn Morse ever since I read _The Victorian Internet_ by Tom
Standage [2]. I know people use keyboards nowadays---and even software to read
Morse and translate it automatically into text---but I want to learn to send
it by hand. Do you recommend a straight key or a bug to begin with? (I just
love the look of those beautiful machines with tiny pendulums and jewelled
bearings and neodymium magnet 'springs'...). I also wonder about electronic
keyers with paddles. What works best for a beginner who wants to develop a
good 'fist'?

[1] [http://www.vibroplex.com/](http://www.vibroplex.com/)

[2] Standage, Tom. _The Victorian Internet_. New York: Walker and Company,
1998. ISBN 978-0-8027-1604-0.

~~~
lutusp
> Do you recommend a straight key or a bug to begin with?

I'm biased because (before the computer era) I never used anything but a
straight key. I recommend a normal telegraph key for beginners -- they're
easier to control and they produce an appreciation for the simplest possible
form of radio and wired communication:

This picture --

[http://www.mtechnologies.com/ameco/k4a.jpg](http://www.mtechnologies.com/ameco/k4a.jpg)

\-- is of a real antique, but one still available today. Unchanged, it dates
back to the land telegraph era, during which one operator, when finished
sending, would throw the switch visible at the top center, thus closing his
end of the circuit and allowing the other end to reply, in what was a simple
two-wire one-battery telegraph circuit.

Interestingly, in 1859, there was a huge solar and geomagnetic storm, much
bigger than anything that has happened since, and one of the few contemporary
indications was that the telegraph system went crazy:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859)

A quote: "Telegraph systems all over Europe and North America failed, in some
cases shocking telegraph operators. Telegraph pylons threw sparks. Some
telegraph systems continued to send and receive messages despite having been
disconnected from their power supplies."

It is estimated that, were such a storm to occur today, it would bring modern
electronics -- and society -- to its knees.

> What works best for a beginner who wants to develop a good 'fist'?

Well, one, listening to good sending certainly helps. Also not trying to send
too quickly at first, and listening more than sending until one acquires a
sense of what good telegraphy sounds like.

~~~
VLM
I agree with your remarks and extend them such that bugs and keyers usually
are not built to operate slowly enough for folks starting out to use them.

Start with the straight key, and at some point you'll be able to hear faster
than you can comfortably send for long periods, and start wondering what
technology would allow you to send quicker... that's the time to start looking
at bugs and paddles and electronic keyers and memory keyers and morse
keyboards and all that kind of stuff.

Maybe bad analogy time is learn to type on a classic traditional keyboard
(model M?), then start looking at the infinite array of ergonomic keyboards.

~~~
jloughry
Thank you! I'll begin with a traditional key, and listening.

My keyboard is an IBM Model F [1] through an interface from Hasgstrom
Electronics. It has the Control key and Escape key in the old places,
essential for vi.

[1] I bought the Model F from
[http://www.clickykeyboards.com/](http://www.clickykeyboards.com/)

[2] Pre-PC/AT keyboards won't work directly with PC/2 or USB adapters; you
need a protocol converter from
[http://www.hagstromelectronics.com/products/ke_xtusb.html](http://www.hagstromelectronics.com/products/ke_xtusb.html)

------
andrewcooke
when i used to walk an hour to work (and another back), i considered using
morse as an interface to a portable computer (for editing and playback of
text). it's easy to hear and understand, even when there's considerable
ambient noise, and data entry would only require a single button (plus perhaps
a rocker switch or similar to scan through existing data).

at the time i had no real idea how to implement it. now i think i could do
something with an arduino or similar. but thankfully i now work from home...

~~~
bkanber
I've also thought about a pocket-sized clicker device that you could use to
send Morse to your friends, perhaps interfaced with your phone. Or maybe, as
you said, you could use it as an input device. One day when I have some extra
time on my hands I'm sure I'll sketch one out. But I've got to learn Morse
first! ;)

------
pjbrunet
I tried learning in middle school and just memorizing all the letters was a
pain. At that age it's just not that exciting, at least for me it wasn't. I
can totally appreciate the value of it now, the ability to send messages
around the world with just an antenna. My wave is bigger than yours, or
something like that, LOL.

~~~
unoti
It's easier to just memorize, say, 2 letters, then practice telling those two
letters apart from each other. Then you add another letter...

------
asgard1024
I wonder, given that Morse Code is pretty old, are there any better (for
humans) codes for text as a binary stream?

I mean better in different ways - easier to learn, less error prone,
shorter,..

------
Apocryphon
It seems like the sort of universal, deprecated but never gone, sort of system
of communication that would be useful in a post-apocalyptic scenario.

------
zbinga
Titrate is invisible.

------
shitgoose
well, if i knew morse code, i could drive and text easily. or type an email in
the middle of a meeting without anyone noticing. looks like a good skill.
considering learning it.

------
KaiserPro
.._. ..- -.-. -.-

~~~
16s
[http://www.livephysics.com/tools/mathematical-tools/morse-
co...](http://www.livephysics.com/tools/mathematical-tools/morse-code-
conversion-tool/)

