High speed morse telegraphy using a straight key

sebastiantombs

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Sending is one thing, receiving is a whole other thing, especially random groups like that. I worked for a guy that was a signal specialist in the Navy "back in the day". He could send and receive at 75WPM using a straight key. Best I could do on a straight key was about 25WPM and maybe 40WPM with a VibroPlex. Receiving at 40WPM was real work though.
 

concord

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Great mind/memory and reflexes, but he forgot to plug it in :D! The lazy way is just type message on your computer in English (or other) and let it send the Morse code.
 

garycrist

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I hated code. The best(?) I could do was 25 and starting to "hear" words. We used to have a guy that claimed to be Sam's grandson(?).
Stories they told about being telegraph ops, playing cards, then hearing their "call sign" over all of the other clicking going on.

I wrote a basic program to send me random sets as I had memorized the tapes. I set everything down on the computer @ 10-12 wpm. due to a shop opening.
In the interim I replaced the 8088 w/ a V20 NEC chip not knowing it affected the timing of the program. After a tremendous effort, I was @ 15WPM
on my program. I could now test for my General.

As the code test started, my hand took over as if by auto-writing and 5 minutes of perfect text, with the mistakes that were intentionally embedded
in the text. I wondered why the test was so slow with my new temp. AG. Sometime later I timed my computer generated code and found it was popping
25ish W.P.M. not the 15 plugged in the program. What a fool I was! I forgot CPU clock went from 4.77 to 10 MHz thus affecting the timing. So much for
my programming skills.
 

SyconsciousAu

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Stories they told about being telegraph ops, playing cards, then hearing their "call sign" over all of the other clicking going on.
That doesn't sound that far fetched to be honest. A morse callsign is just a series of tones in a specific order, so I can see how they could attune their ear to that, much like a voice operator can ignore all of the traffic until they hear their callsign.
 

toastie

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12wpm was all that was required for our license, my mother was better, she'd be listening to morse on her headphones as she did the household ironing. She filled many more log books than I achieved.
I'm not so certain that speed is everything, sending more steadily someone's character can comes across which I think is a plus.. Not a Vibroplex but we had something similar, an Eddystone semi-automatic key. I made a valve based electronic key that also automated the dashes.
 
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