Ha, ha! Excellent point Tom. I never learned to hear "words". I ran my speed up to 35 WPM, copying on a mechanical typewriter, and decided it wasn't fun going any faster. To this day, copying in my head while puttering around the shack, I still copy letters, not words, so that's why I didn't add think about the third step.
And, I submit, hearing "words" is a relatively recent phenomena for most operators since, until recently, copying CW meant accurately copying each character onto paper was needed for message handling. The characters might be plain text, numbers or code groups. I made the transition from paper or mill copy as you describe: by not copying every letter but only the key stuff. Pretty soon I wasn't writing anything at all and just listening. But it's still letter-by-letter for me. Ron AC7AC -----Original Message----- From: Tom McCulloch [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2008 5:24 PM To: Ron D'Eau Claire; Elecraft e-mail list Subject: Re: [Elecraft] Farnsworth Method Hi Ron, I absolutely agree with your comments and observations. If I might respectfully add a third step might be to "hear words". I think once we can copy a qso in heads we are well on our way to increasing our copy speed. A beginner would do well not to right down every letter. Common things like "RST" and "QTH" are a good place to start and then move on from there. Nice thread, tnx Tom WB2QDG _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: [email protected] You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
