I'm glad to hear someone say this. I can copy at least 30 wpm now,
and I rarely hear words. I suppose I do hear some of the more common
ones, such as "FER" or "THE", but for everything else it's still
letter-by-letter for me, too.
I'd also like to echo the comment someone else made about head copy
being "satisfying." That's the way I feel about it, too. Being able
to do this makes working CW so much less of a task and so much more
enjoyable.
73!
Dan KB6NU
----------------------------------------------------------
CW Geek and MI Affiliated Club Coordinator
Read my ham radio blog at http://www.kb6nu.com
LET'S GET MORE KIDS INTO HAM RADIO!
On Mar 25, 2008, at Mar 25, 11:10 PM, Ron D'Eau Claire wrote:
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
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