User Guide

Preface

The CW flow practice tools complement the Morse Code learning curriculum of the Long Island CW Club. These tools are designed primarily for Intermediate level students. Full details of the curriculum are found in the LICW Student and Instructor Guide. Students enter the Intermediate level after they have acheived aural recognition of Morse Code characters. At the Intermediate level, students can expect they will:

  • Develop intuitive processing of character sequences to enable receiving conversational code and relaxed copy of common words. (Intermediate 1: 12 WPM)
  • Build cognitive efficiency as speeds increase while reducing Time to Recognize (TTR) and training for Instant Flow Recovery(IFR).(Intermediate 2: 12-16 WPM)
  • Shift from consciously constructing words (word building) to intuitively perceiving them (word discovery). (Intermediate 3: 16-20 WPM)

Practice Tool: Phrase Copy

The Phrase Copy Practice tool randomly presents phrases and words from a variety of categories, e.g. Words, Brand Slogans, Common Phrases, Song Titles, etc. You may select difficulty level by varying the speed of the code. These exercises are very appropriate to the Intermediate 1 student, when focused on recognition of words and phrases. The tool allows you to listen to the word or phrase as many times as desired, and will reveal the phrase visually on request.

The simplest exercise for this tool is copying words. For instance:
3 letter words
When using the tool on a PC, "hot keys" are provided to control the exercise:
- Right Arrow: Get the next phrase
- Left Arrow: Play the phrase again
- Up Arrow: Reveal the phrase
- Down Arrow: Hide the phrase
On all devices, these functions may be accessed with a click or touch.

One of the most difficult exercises for this practice tool would be:
Shakespearean Rhyming Couplets
Thousands of phrases are available with varying difficulty.

You may practice at slow speeds by writing out the copy. To prepare for higher level skills, try to do these exercises as head copy.

For effective learning and progress, set the difficulty level so that some misses occur, but where much is recognized. Someplace in that zone will be the sweet spot for progress.

Sending Practice: This tool facilitates sending practice in two ways:
  1. Listen to a word or a phrase, then send it to match the timing you heard. Use the hot keys and repeat till satisfied.
  2. Listen to a word or a phrase. Then repeat it, and after the first letter or word come in and play along as a duet. You'll be able to hear duet tones well if you set your oscillator tone to 700 hertz.

Practice Tool: Word Building/TTR

The Word Building/Time to Recognize (TTR) tool presents words in a random, continuous stream. The tool encourages you to maintain a forward focus. Maintaining a forward focus, and suppressing thoughts of missed characters is an essential skill on the path to fluency. The tool never reveals the words visually. Thus it further encourages you to forget about your misses and keep looking forward. You may however ask for repetitions of the words to judge or reinforce your copy.

Difficulty Level: Set a difficulty level that enhances your training, one where you are missing some, but not all (that's the sweet spot for training progress). Difficulty may be set with four different controls:

  • Word Collection (easy or hard words)
  • WPM
  • Repetitions
  • Word Spacing
Word Building and Time to Recognize: Naturally, the time you take to recognize characters and assemble words will determine your Morse Code top speed. Our amazing brains perform multiple functions simultaneously. As such guaging our Time to Recognize progress is best done in the context of word building and recognition. The tool provides exactly that. For the combination of WPM and word spacing you choose, the time between words is displayed. For instance, 20 WPM with standard word spacing allows for 420 milliseconds between words. In this exercise when you acheive recognition before the next word starts, the word spacing time as displayed is your time to recognize. Note that a higher WPM speed with more word spacing could represent a similar TTR.

Project Overlearn: The tool complements the word building exercises of Project Overlearn. You can create exercises that meet or challenge your learning level by varying the four controls of difficulty level.

Practice Tool: Phrase Flow / IFR

Once you are competent in word building, you may progress toward CW fluency by practicing word discovery and Instant Flow Recovery (IFR). This practice tool presents random phrases in a continuous stream for you to listen to and discover their meaning. The phrases are never displayed visually, so forward motion is really the only option. With this focus, you confidently know that words will be perceived as they come along. When you are at this level the magic starts to happen. The skill you are acquiring is akin what you did when learning to read. Initially you decoded words phonetically. With more experience, you simply perceived words and phrases on the page with little or no decoding. What a fun thing!

Difficulty Level: Set a difficulty level that enhances your training, one where you are missing some, but not all (that's the sweet spot for training progress). Difficulty may be set with four different controls:

  • Phrase Collection (easy or hard phrases)
  • WPM
  • Repetitions
  • Word Spacing

Practice Tool: Phrase Sending

The phrase sending tool, visually presents random phrases from a collection of your choice. You may choose easy phrases or complex ones. The right-arrow key may be used as a hot key to present the next random phrase. A particularly interesting set of phrases for sending practice is "pangrams": sentences that contain all 26 letters of the alphabet. You may want to use a phrase from this collection to start your daily sending practice.

Practice Tool: CW Books

For an intense workout of your devleping skills, a collection of public domain books are presented in this tool. You may set the WPM for the exercise, and optionally display the full text of the book part or chapter selected. The books are divided into parts that run for five to ten minutes at 20 WPM. A recommended practice routine is to just listen to the text three times through. You may find that your comprehension increases each time.

Difficulty Level: The difficulty level may be adjusted by varying the WPM, or the selection of book. Aesop's Fables have some of the simplest text.

Alternate usage: If you are interested in testing your transcription skills with the ARRL Code Proficiency Runs, these CW books may help you prepare. Be forewarned though: the proficiency runs will contain numbers. Number practice may be found in this phrase work: Addresses

Practice Tool: Callsign Trainer

Description: This tool plays a U.S. callsign twice and then displays the callsign.

Usage: The first time the callsign is played, it may optionally be played with some "word spacing" between the prefix and suffix of the callsign. You may select that "word space" from 0 to 10.

Rationale: This training follows the theory that short term memory has room for just a handful of items. Those items may be concepts, characters, numbers, or whatever. So if we can reduce the first part the callsign to a concept, rather than one or two characters and a number, then our short-term memory usage is simplified.