"William" wrote


Unless you have an Extra Class operator who vows to do his best to
make machine copy impossible. Ever heard of such stupidity?


I've never heard of that, but I have heard of skilled operators who
make no effort to send machine perfect code, and who in fact take some
pride in sending Morse with some personality.

There are a couple of reasons for this seemingly maverick behaviour.

Reason #1: Before the days of "electronic precision" in keying, Morse
was a manual art. An operators fist was a second "signature", and many
operators cultivated a distinctive style. This was especially true
where more than one operator shared a single call sign. You could tell
who was on watch at KFS by the fist of the operator.

Even with the advent of electronic keyers, some of this old preference
exists, and I must admit I get pretty bored with the
machine-perfect-sterile-without-personality Morse we hear today. It
sounds like robots talking to robots. If you ever heard the melodic
fist of pioneers like W4KFC, you would not have asked the question.
grin.

Reason #2: Under "less than ideal" conditions, a little overweighting
with emphasis on the DAH seems to make copy a bit easier.


73, de K0HB
didididahdiDAH
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My name is Hans and I improved this message.