Overland Telegraph - 140 years ago, yesterday!

An ABC News story today tells of the celebrations in Darwin this week marking the start of the Overland Telegraph on 20th June 1870 when the South Australian parliament voted to dedicate about half its annual budget to building the telegraph line!

Barrie Barnes of the SA & NT Morsecodians and others appear in the video accompanying the story explaining the history.

CW resources

Via a link to a Facebook page I found two morse related application (for Windows) here. This page is interesting not just for the RSS Morse and Morse Keyer programs, but also some handy morse related links.

I discovered a free pdf book 'Zen and the Art of Radiotelegraphy' by Carlo Consoli, IK0YGJ. Interestingly Carlo wrote the book in Italian, translated it into English himself and then got Ulrich Steinberg, N2DE to revise the book. Net result: Very readable! When you think about it the first thoughts behind the first morse signals to hit the ether would have been in Italian! Carlo also salutes craftsmen such as craftsmen like Piero Begali I2RTF, Salvatore Canzoneri IK1OJM and Alberto Frattini I1QOD.

There are also links to versions of The Art and Skill of Radiotelegraphy by William G. Pierpont N0HFF (3rd edition - 20 April 2002) and Using an Iambic Paddle by Chuck Adams, K7QO.

Also via a post to the CW email group a link to K6DBG's page on 'Some things I've discovered about learning and operating CW' and a link to a "a cross-platform Morse program http://c2.com/morse/.

This site is the distributon site for current and historical versions
of A Fully Automatic Morse Code Teaching Machine first described in a

May 1977 QST article of the same name by Ward Cunningham.". 

Ward Cunningham of course is the ham who also developed one of the earliest wikis at http://c2.com/cgi/wiki.

Call that a morse key!

Received the club key from SKCC today.
A very solid piece of work that you can tell immediately was designed by an operator. It's beautifully finished with adjustment knobs that instill confidence.
And it certainly makes some in my small collection look tiny!

USB morse key

Via Julian G3ILO news of an Arduino based project to build an inteface to enable direct input to a computer with a morse key. Lots of information can be found here.

It looks like a neat little project. I don't get the feeling it's going to be offered as a kit or anything. Most of what you'd need to know to make one is on the site including a schematic and the code that decodes the morse code!

This is similar  - in concept at least - to those iPhone morse apps where you can tape the screen in the same way you would a straight key, and the app gives you feedback on your morse - at the most basic level by translating it back to what you hopefully intended to say.

What would be even more exciting would be an interface that could also handle paddle input to PCs ... a bit like the $1.99 iPhone app iDitDahText by Marc Vaillant. You can only load this one on to jailbroken iPhones. It's available via the Cydia Store. It enables you to enter text in all iPhone apps using the equivalent of an iambic keypad on the screen up to 50 wpm. Great party trick!

Or better still isn't there a way to connect the output of the iPhone or even the iPad - electrical not audio - to control a keyer and a transmitter. Throw in PTT control while you're at it!

Three new keys

As the aussie dollar dies and the exchange rate plummets (down > 11% in less than a week!), I can sense the appeal of eBay waning. And soon the pleasant flow of small and not so small packets from overseas may dry up. (Even now - with  slight recovery - the aussie is just at US 83 cents compared to 93c last week.)

This week I've received three keys - from the UK, the US and Victoria - all of them neat and smaller than your average morse key.

Arriving from the UK was a key made by New York firm J H Bunnell - similar to the very first key I ever had in my teens. It was billed as a WWII key.

Coincidentally in the same delivery there was a key I'd ordered from the J H Bunnell company in the states. I was responding to an (out-of-date as it turned out to be) note about a stash of NOS (new old stock) Bunnell Navy Flameproof keys. They wrote back promptly to let me know these keys were out of stock but they did have NOS supplies of the same MIL STD CMI-26003A keys manufactured as the prefix indicates by Molded Insulator. A very neat key, as new in what looks like the original labelled cardboard box.

The last of this trio of keys to arrive was an as new Hi Mound HK-705 which Morse Express describes as the little brother to my HK-708.

All of these keys are compact enough to literally fit in your pocket, but still not as small as - or perhaps as practical for portable ops - as the tiny Palm Paddle!

Iambic keying: How to?

Stumbled across interesting YouTube video on "Iambic Keyer and Technique" attempting to teach how to use an Iambic keyer. It's about 5 1/2 mins long. Another video from IK0YGJ simply shows the sender using a beautiful Begali Sculpture and sending at 50wpm.
While I'm at it I should include the link to the 9mins plus video explaining how to use iDitDahText on the iphone.

The creator of the Continental code

I stumbled on to a page on Wikipedia about Friedrich Clemens Gerke, (22 Jan 1801 - 21 May 1888) the man responsible for simplifying Vail and Morse's original telegraphic code.

As the wikipedia article explains, "The original Morse code consisted of four different hold durations (the amount of time the key was held down), and some letters contained inconsistent internal durations of silence. In Gerke's system there are only "dits" and "dahs", the latter being three times as long as the former, and the internal silence intervals are always a single dit-time each."

 This chart reveals the logic behind his reform of the code.

 

After some minor changes it was standardised at the International Telegraphy congress in Paris in 1865.

Morse gems

Browsing today and came across some rich veins of morse information, including a great list of morse related links on the SKCC site, G0RDO's Morsemad site which has another fantastic list and the site of George VK2DLF with his brilliant keys such as the model 900 below.

These keys look like they're worth the 6-12 month wait.

Portuguese in morse

This page has a listing of how different alphabets and accented characters are sent with morse including Russian, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Japanese and Korean. I feel an overwhelming urge to change it from its dots and dashes layout to a didah format to reinforce the sound and not the visual structure of the characters. As comprehensive as these charts are, I'm still a little in the dark about some accents used in Portuguese. It could be that they're simply not used in morse. Maybe listening to QSOs is the only way to confirm this.

Even the listing on the Portuguese Wikipedia page is missing the ã character. And this Brazilian page makes no mention of accented characters, even though it does explain that the codes for each character reflect their frequency in English.

Palm Paddle and Code Cube

Took delivery yesterday of a Palm Radio Paddle and the Code Cube. Reassuring how well made they are. The paddle is very finely adjustable. t comes with a neat base which has two strong magnets which have s great grip on the top of a FT-817 and make for a very compact package.

Very convenient combo for practising using a paddle and ready to go out of the box - but I can't work out how to adjust the actual volume of the sidetone. Maybe it can't be done. Excellent quality is such a relief when you buy something sight unseen on the recommendations of others.

I also got the Peg Legs for the FT-817 which are very neat and retractable. They took all of a couple of minutes to attach to the tiny transceiver. It took me longer to work out how to re-thread the carrying strap through the bracket slots. Good to put the brain through its paces.

Morse alive!

Great BBC story on morse code from 2008, mentioned on the FT817 email list by Joe WB7VTY:

CW Operator's QRP Club Inc

I rejoined the CW Operator's QRP Club Inc. after a long absence. I was surprised to discover I'm entitled to my original membership no #56. It's probably been almost two decades.

I have fond memories of the Lo-Key magazine, but I'm also keen to have a go at the club's Milliwatts per Kilometre Award! 10,000km on 5W or 1,000km on 500mW!

Samuel Morse's 219th birthday

Samuel Morse was born 219 years ago. But of course credit for devising the code that bears Morse's name goes to his assistant (machinist & inventor) Alfred Vail. His birthday is 25th September 1807.

This key was built by Alfred Vail as an improvement on Samuel Morse’s original transmitter.

New CW learning resource

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

But make sure to check out the new training section on the SKCC site featuring mp3 files prepared by John KF7BYU.
So far the following texts are online, some in speeds ranging from 5 up to 50 wpm, along with text files:
The War of the Worlds, The Gettysburg Address, The Jabberwock, The Night Before Christmas, Hams Christmas and The Raven.

Start at 35wpm and you'll copy at 25 in no time!

Fantastic approach:

"You can copy 25 wpm in three weeks, with just 15 min a day practice. Start at 35 and work down... You listen, and listen some more. Use the W1AW practice run that starts at 35 wpm. After a few weeks, 25 wpm will sound slow, and you should be able to write the characters."

Ron on the CW list describing how he broke through his own plateau. Extreme Farnsworth.

QOTD straight vs paddle

Quote of the Day from David N1EA in an exchange on the CW list about the merits of a CW newbie starting with a straight key or jumping straight onto a bug or paddle:

"A paddle and speed key in the hand of someone who has no feel for Morse sounds pretty ugly when they start sending with no spaces or extra dots and dashes. Kind of like running a rotary floor buffer the first time!"

David argues "with a straight key - especially on the lower frequencies - 1.8, 3,5 and 7.0 MHz - you can customize your sending to match the conditions. Sometimes sending "fatter" dashes gets the message through."

Another adds:

"...do yourself a favor, and learn with a straight key. Learning to be proficient in sending and receiving "good" code, is not magic. It takes a little dedication, and lots of practice on a regular basis. Check out youtube and you will see more than one "cw op" who thinks he is the cat's meow on a bug or paddle, little does he know that what he is sending is considered "poop fist" material. By learning slowly with a hand key, you will learn proper spacing between characters and words. When you get to the point where you can set the gap on your hand key at a "hairs width" and send with it perfectly at 15 to 20 wpm, you might then give a paddle a try."

K3WWP's site

I've only just discovered K3WWP's CW and QRP site via NW7US' http://cw.hfradio.org/.

Amazed at the continuous record of publishing online since 1996 and the simple but powerful commitment to have at least one CW QRP QSO every day (a little like the necessary resolution of any half serious blogger!). What a model!

And what a wealth of good info there is online for the CW and QRP fan. Which makes the challenge of actually getting on the air and operating even greater!

Looking forward to exploring the K3WWP site further.

European keying

Attention drawn by a post to the SKCC email list to video on the GHD keys site illustrating the 'European' style of keying, demonstrated appropriately enough in this video by a Japanese operator. On this page it's described as the 'Reaction Method'.




Also an interesting exchange of comments on the SKCC list about this style.

Also found the GHD catalogue an eye-opener. Some very sophisticated keys and paddles there. Again these keys are also available from Morse Express.