[HN Gopher] Koch Method to Learn Morse
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Koch Method to Learn Morse
Author : Tomte
Score : 184 points
Date : 2022-10-17 08:54 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (stendec.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (stendec.io)
| Daub wrote:
| My father, who is an expert in matters relating to early
| wireless, was asked by the National Geographic to recreate the
| SOS message sent by the Titanic. This has historical significance
| as it was the first time that the SOS was used. In order to make
| it as authentic as possible, he used an ancient brass Morse code
| key wired to a spark transmitter. The spark signal was picked up
| by an old radio he had wired up to a tape recorder.
|
| Caveat: I may have got a few details wrong. It's been a long time
| since he shared the story.
| exitb wrote:
| Note that in a ham radio setting, morse code is only part of the
| equation. The conversations typically follow patterns that aren't
| very readable, even when transcribed to ASCII.
|
| http://lidscw.org/resources/cq-qso-template
| csdvrx wrote:
| This is because there're different levels: they are similar to
| EOL, LF and EOF.
|
| From http://lidscw.org/resources/cq-qso-template
|
| > There are three in general use: AR signifies the end of the
| message, KN marks the end of your transmission and an
| invitation to the other station to reply, and SK says it's the
| end of the contact and your last transmission to that station
|
| See this nice discussion on the nature of morse:
|
| https://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/39920/is-morse-code-b...
|
| > TLDR: We can thus conclude that the Morse code can be
| understood, and easily analyzed, as the composition of a prefix
| binary encoding of a 3 symbols alphabet {dot, dash, sep} into a
| binary alphabet, and a prefix encoding of a 58 symbol alphabet
| (57 characters and one space) into the 3 letters alphabet.
|
| > The composition itself is a prefix encoding of the 58 symbols
| into a binary representation.
|
| Check this part:
|
| > However, some people would be inclined to recognize the space
| DET at level 2, thus making the alphabet quaternary, then using
| it directly at level 3, encoded as itself in level 2.
|
| > This would meet the standard definition, for DET encoded in
| binary as 0000. But it would prevent the analysis of the binary
| encoding C2-1 as a prefix code, making it harder to show that
| CMorse is a prefix code, hence unambiguous.
|
| In your link, AR, KN and SK can be considered in a similar way,
| but applied to the decoded message.
| srvmshr wrote:
| While training for Amateur radio license, I came across
| interesting things which I hadn't observed before, mainly to do
| with the ProSigns (like the SOS degdegdeg---degdegdeg)
|
| * There is no word in English dictionary with HH (degdegdegdeg
| degdegdegdeg). Hence it's a code to indicate scratch the last
| word.
|
| * The washing machines & microwaves of many manufacturers often
| beeped AS (deg-degdegdeg i.e. Wait) in Morse when they were
| done, to indicate machine is "standing by"
| gorgoiler wrote:
| *withhold the last word?
| HoraceSchemer wrote:
| > There is no word in English dictionary with HH
| (degdegdegdeg degdegdegdeg).
|
| Beachhead
| jshprentz wrote:
| >> There is no word in English dictionary with HH
| (degdegdegdeg degdegdegdeg).
|
| > Beachhead
|
| Also bathhouse, fishhook, hitchhike, roughhouse, and
| withhold.
| Twisol wrote:
| More commonly, "uhh", "ahh", and "ehh" (and their
| elongations) -- though I imagine their function is either
| fulfilled in other ways in Morse (prosigns?) or simply not
| needed.
| masukomi wrote:
| do you realistically see yourself, or anyone else keying
| in those ?
|
| Using morse is all about efficient transmission in high
| noise environments.
|
| Personally, I think I'd be annoyed if i had to decode
| that whilst sitting on a mountain top, or wherever (not
| being hyperbolic SOTA[1] and POTA[2] are real things
| folks participate in).
|
| [1]: Summits On The Air https://www.sota.org.uk/ [2]:
| Parks on the Air https://parksontheair.com/
| Twisol wrote:
| I'm not a Morse operator, so I wouldn't know. That's why
| I said the function of these words may simply not be
| needed.
|
| The poster earlier claimed that no English word contains
| the digraph "hh", however, which is simply untrue. It's
| quite uncommon, and I'm sure the prosign use of HH is
| grammatically unambiguous in general, but it being
| invalid otherwise is not a well-founded reason.
| srvmshr wrote:
| My reference was towards unconjugated words. GP posted
| 'beachhead' - which is a colloquially derived American
| English word by conjugation of two common English words.
| Normally you don't see conjugated or stretchy words in
| amateur radio to facilitate esse. So Simple Wikipedia
| level of vocabulary, having words which are rather
| unambiguous to all English speakers. Outside of US, I am
| sure most people will pause to grasp whats a beachhead.
| Over HF your taps can be heard half way around the globe.
| Its considered good manners to be clear & concise
|
| 'Ahh uhh' etc aren't useful in a mode of telegraph
| communication which is rather very terse & commonly does
| not even include is/are/and etc in transmission. Pithy
| sentences relaying the content matter is encouraged - to
| speed up typing & also not to block useful airwave. Most
| HAMs are sharing a narrow set of channels & only one
| operator pushes-to-'talk' at any given time
| criddell wrote:
| So no withhold, fishhook, or hitchhike? How do they
| handle names like Munchhausen?
| hanoz wrote:
| By proxy.
| Twisol wrote:
| That's totally fair! It sounds like these words simply
| aren't used in Morse communication, which seems
| reasonable due to its purpose. I imagine HH as a prosign
| is also fairly unambiguous in grammatical context, even
| if someone did need to key it as part of a word.
| arjvik wrote:
| Is there a good reason to learn Morse in modern day besides just
| for kicks? Some sort of survival situation in which your only
| form of communication would be Morse, and you can't get out of it
| by sending ASCII binary?
|
| Not knocking on anybody's learning for fun, just curious.
| jimpudar wrote:
| In the US, you no longer need to learn Morse to get any of the
| amateur licenses. Most people who are learning it today are
| doing it just for fun.
| wrycoder wrote:
| Like ham radio itself.
| Tepix wrote:
| Yes, it is important for solving some of the more challenging
| bomb disposals in the game "Keep talking and nobody explodes"
| within the alotted time limit :-)
|
| Also i think Morse is sometimes used in Geocaching riddles and
| CTFs.
| onenukecourse wrote:
| My wife and I have wanted to learn it for years so we could
| communicate to each other while holding hands. But who has the
| time?
| Sebb767 wrote:
| > and you can't get out of it by sending ASCII binary?
|
| It's a minor point, but I doubt you'll find many people who can
| decode binary ASCII in their head (especially in contexts like
| tapping), not to mention that you'll need 7/8 bits per char
| instead of the ~3 Morse code uses.
| praptak wrote:
| Enter tap code, most often used by prisoners to communicate
| between cells. Row and column in a 5x5 table of chars,
| encoded by series of taps.
| VLM wrote:
| I don't know if you'd call it a "good" reason because its a
| rare skill to have, but for pilots the NDB beacons and VOR
| beacons usually transmit their ID in morse code, so you're a
| button press away from being certain you actually tuned in the
| correct navigation beacon.
|
| Slightly improved situational awareness when navigating is
| probably more of a method to avoid a survival situation, than
| to be a survival situation itself.
| swalberg wrote:
| It is more power efficient than voice. You put the same power
| into roughly 50Hz of bandwidth vs 2.2k for voice, so you can
| work the world on a modest station. Its also easier to pick out
| in the noise than voice.
|
| Amateur radio is more than just "have a conversation with a
| random person". There are contests, challenges where you try
| and contact some number of states, countries, etc, and events.
|
| One popular event is Parks on the Air where people go to a
| designated park and set up a temporary station then try and
| make contacts. It has a sibling event called summits on the Air
| where you do the same thing on top of a summit. Using CW lets
| you do that with less gear and in more adverse conditions.
|
| Finally, its a brain workout. If you like the feeling of being
| " in the zone" then getting into a Morse conversation or
| participating in a contest is just the ticket.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Amateur radio is more than just "have a conversation with a
| random person". There are contests, challenges where you try
| and contact some number of states, countries, etc, and
| events."
|
| For me the technical learning and building projects was the
| most fun (although I never could get that damn ubitx to work
| well).
| roenxi wrote:
| Why rule out a survival situation? While nuclear missiles would
| probably just end all life, there are a broad spectrum of other
| things that can go wrong in the next decade that just take out
| power grids. It would be good to be ready with more robust
| technology than GPS-aware microchips, I can see how it could
| come in handy.
|
| I'm seeing a lot of energy security issues out there, and there
| are extreme economic pressures all over that could spill out in
| unexpected ways. There are some profoundly grumpy people out
| there right now.
| gw99 wrote:
| I would 100% completely rule it out in survival situations.
| The probability of making a contact and that contact being of
| use is very low. There are far more productive uses of your
| time than bashing brass. I say that as a regular QRP CW
| operator.
|
| In a survival situation you're better off with VHF/UHF HTs
| and a tested network of people that you already know who have
| them and how to use them. And even that is of dubious use.
| akerl_ wrote:
| Sure, but how does knowing Morse help in those scenarios.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Generally CW mode (morse) can be transmitted farther on
| less power than most other modes, and can be sent and
| recieved without sophisticated electronics (build your own
| QRP rig for like $10).
|
| But yeah, there's not a lot of utility, even in rare or
| hypothetical emergencies. Many other things one could focus
| on.
| lupire wrote:
| In apocalypse you'll have a lot of down time to learn
| Morse.
| schaefer wrote:
| Interesting. Without grocery stores (et. all) I think
| most of us will have far less free time.
| fsiefken wrote:
| listen to long distance news updates and survival tips for
| you and your loved ones through your wind-up AM radio in
| morse during nuclear winter.
| VLM wrote:
| Some infinitely more likely survival situations involve
| tooting on a horn or blinking a flashlight.
|
| Survival situations are one of those power law distributions
| where the odds of one person being in a survival situation at
| some point in their life are surprisingly high, regardless
| how unlikely it would be for a couple billion people to
| simultaneously be in the same survival situation.
| aussiegeek wrote:
| Very fair question, I had the same thinking two years ago.
| Since then I got interested in amateur radio, and in particular
| low power, portable operations as well as homebrewing
| transceivers.
|
| Using only 5W when conditions are right can work from Australia
| around the planet using a $30 radio and a 20m wire antenna
| thrown in a tree.
|
| Also, while its definitely possible to homebrew equipment that
| transmits voice, morse code is much simpler as you are
| approximately connecting power from an oscillator to a small
| amplifier (a couple of garden variety transistors works just
| fine here)
| fsiefken wrote:
| If you are disabled or can only use a finger - you could
| control your computer or android with the morse keyboard with
| autocomplete, would work for termux as well. It'd be slow, but
| it'd work. The problem is, you'd need a knowledgable buddy to
| set up the system for you... or you can start right now and
| switch to morse code entry - force yourself within the limit of
| 20 wpm.
| deaddabe wrote:
| Initially, I learned it for fun and ham radio emitting. But I
| find it fascinating that you can use it with anything that can
| be turned on and off with a rythm.
|
| I used a flashlight to say "hello" while waiting for a
| fireworks event, but the other person far away just blinked
| their flashlight randomly in response.
|
| I guess it could be used for worst scenario speech, like
| blinking eyes for examples if I ever have a terrible accident
| somehow (has been used by tortured persons, see
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZ256UU8xJ0). When I saw Tuco's
| grandpa in Breaking Bad taking so much time to write words with
| his bell, I just tought about using morse (but with something
| more elaborate than a bell, because you want to use long and
| short tones; same problem applies if you want to knock on walls
| or doors).
| lupire wrote:
| Use double tones/knocks if you don't have long.
| wl wrote:
| This is a bad idea. You'll make a dah sound like two or
| three badly timed dits.
|
| Copying morse code by ear is all about the rhythm. You can
| hear the rhythm just fine with simple knocks or taps.
| whoooooo123 wrote:
| Then how do you distinguish between "long" and "two
| shorts"?
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| Timing, I suppose. A double tone with much less than one
| dit's worth of spacing would be a dah.
| wrycoder wrote:
| Original Morse telegraph was not done by tones.
|
| The sounder emitted two clicks, subtlety different, for
| each key down/up event.
|
| So, a dit would be two clicks with a short interval,
| while a dah would be two clicks with a longer (3x?)
| interval.
| wl wrote:
| It's useful in any situation where you're trying to make the
| most efficient use of the power available to you. The classic
| example is communicating with the other side of the world with
| minimal power, but it's also useful in any situation where
| there's a lot of path loss, like when HF propagation conditions
| to your desired station are terrible or if you're bouncing
| radio signals off the moon.
|
| There are computer-based digital modes these days that
| accomplish the same or similar things like FT8 in terms of
| bandwidth efficiency allowing communication in situations where
| voice modes would not work. There's still a lot of stations
| still working in Morse code. If you're chasing DX (long range
| contacts), it is still very useful.
|
| From a social perspective, using morse code instead of voice
| modes tends to filter out most of the political and health talk
| I try to avoid.
| lupire wrote:
| Do you listen/read/write in Morse, or use a computer to
| translate?
| wl wrote:
| I mostly send with a paddle and decode with my ears. I
| sometimes use keyer memory to play back messages.
| mannykannot wrote:
| In 'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly' there is a point where
| the author, who is suffering locked-in syndrome after a stroke,
| is communicating by having the letters of the alphabet shown to
| him one at a time, with him choosing by making the one small
| gesture he is capable of. Morse code could be much more
| efficient here, and perhaps more efficient than a binary-search
| version of the alphabet method.
| shimonabi wrote:
| A few years ago I tought myself enough in a few days to be able
| to chat with people on https://morsecode.me/
|
| I've forgotten it almost all now.
| cimm wrote:
| I recently got into Morse and was so proud I could send a
| message via your tool. Thanks!
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| Wow this is interesting, I probably am going to learn this way.
| But I've read the Morse code is deprecated and isn't used
| anywhere IRL anymore. Isn't it?
| aeonik wrote:
| Ham radio operators still use it, it's just required for
| licenses in United States anymore.
|
| I believe radiobeacons still use them as part of their
| identification protocol in aviation as well.
| whoooooo123 wrote:
| I think you're missing a "not"
| megalopeos wrote:
| Are new letters usually introduced in a particular order?
| swalberg wrote:
| Yes, though it's not hard and fast. Many sites will teach the
| Koch method but often with subtly different ordering, and very
| different from his original ordering. CW Academy teaches based
| on how frequently you'll hear them on the air. Long Island CW
| Club has changed to another system.
|
| Most systems these days though focus on learning a couple
| letters and then progressively adding more on as you improve.
| ben30 wrote:
| The book Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and
| Software, talks about morse in its first chapter.
|
| The beauty of how morse encoding expands out from the binary dots
| and dashes in to letters and sentences is a lovely thing to read
| about. Think of it more as a tree graph allowing you to find your
| ideal letter, branching out from a root of common letters to less
| common as you fan out.
|
| Brail is mentioned in the second chapter with a similar
| enlightening description.
| bumbledraven wrote:
| OT, does anyone know of an app that will _decode_ Morse code that
| I type in using a single key like the space bar, holding it down
| long for dah and pressing it quickly for dit? It should figure
| out the wpm I 'm using on its own, like a human would, rather
| than making me specify it, or at least it should let me select an
| arbitrary (possibly fractional) wpm rather than offering only a
| fixed list like 15/20/25.
| fr0sty wrote:
| The "Morse Expert" App available for Android/iOS does a pretty
| good job of decoding CW 'in the wild'. It can adapt to
| different sending speeds and does a decent job with non-ideal
| character/element spacing.
|
| The decoding algorithm uses some amount of Bayesian
| probabilities to decide what the proper decoding of the
| incoming signal is: http://ag1le.blogspot.com/2013/01/towards-
| bayesian-morse-dec...
| masukomi wrote:
| there is a _lot_ of ham radio software that decodes live morse
| from live sources where where's no clue what speed it'll be
| coming in at.
| nereye wrote:
| As well as dedicated hardware, to list but two examples:
|
| http://www.morserino.info/
|
| http://wb7fhc.com/m2-cw-decoder.html
| Daub wrote:
| My father, who my entire family suspects is autistic, used to
| communicate with me at mealtimes using whistled more code. I
| learned a bit but have forgotten it all now, just as I have
| forgotten the Spanish that my mother taught me.
| aussiegeek wrote:
| Combination of Koch and Farnsworth is how I've learnt morse code
| in the last year. Has been a challenge at times, but keeping the
| speed up makes a huge difference. The struggle I still have is
| catching words my just listening.
|
| Also worth pointing out CWops https://cwops.org/cw-academy/ and
| the Long Island Club (it's all online) as a classed based way of
| learning. CWops is intensive but very effective
| nickcw wrote:
| I haven't tried this site, but the most well known for learning
| Morse in your browser in Ham radio is:
|
| https://lcwo.net/
|
| Which uses a similar technique. It also has quite a few more
| types of practice such as words, callsigns, games, contests etc.
|
| I learnt Morse code there last year before I did a CW academy
| online course and I really enjoyed the approach.
| nightpool wrote:
| Interesting! I found myself struggling a lot on the linked site
| because the random groupings made it very easy for me to lose
| my place and feel like i've gotten behind, but LCWO's fixed
| groups of 5 help my find my place a lot better.
| cimm wrote:
| On iOS there is Morse Machine, similar idea for single
| characters. There is also morse.camp, a PWA that focuses on
| recognizing English words.
| wrycoder wrote:
| On iOS, I like the Ham Morse app. It does Koch and
| Farnsworth, simulates QSOs, and sends news summaries.
| mdp wrote:
| Yeah, LCWO is the gold standard for Koch training on the web,
| and I'd second the suggestion for CW Academy. Having a
| commitment to learning with other people tends to help you ride
| out the rough patches.
|
| To help with my own learning, I built a mobile friendly web
| app/game which includes Koch as an option. It's also open
| source - https://github.com/mdp/morse.mdp.im - morse.mdp.im
| danilor wrote:
| Does learning to transcribe morse->letters at this speed mean you
| can also do letters->morse in a traditional morse keyer?
| celegans25 wrote:
| Generally yes. Sending morse is much easier than receiving it.
| Once you are comfortable receiving morse at 25wpm for example,
| the amount of practice needed to send at that speed is pretty
| minimal.
| swalberg wrote:
| Somewhat. There's a skill to the timing that needs to be picked
| up in addition to the patterns you learn when learning to copy.
| Ideally, you're also practicing sending with some kind of local
| oscillator or your radio set to monitor mode. One reinforces
| the other.
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