Michael Black wrote:
Al ) writes:
Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to be a ham. I could never learn the
code. It seems I have a very difficult time memorizing. I didn't know my
multipication table until 8th grade. But somehow I managed to get a
master's degree in EE and worked as a consultant on a satellite at MIT.
Yes, it's still working after 10 years.

But of course, your problem was in thinking you needed to memorize
the code. What you should have been doing is listening to the code
sent at high speed, actually the characters at high speed with lots of
spacing betweent he characters so the overall speed is slow, so you hear
the sounds of each individual character, rather than a set of dots
and dashes. You never go near a code key until you can receive properly,
and you basically toss out all those alphabet to code charts.

Just think of all the time you could have had if you'd stuck with it
as a kid, rather than thinking it was a matter of memorizing the code,
and then thinking you had problems memorizing things.

Learning morse code when I was 12 was one of the easiest things I
ever did, and the only reason I waited till 12 was that before that
there was a rule in Canada that said you had to be over 15 to get
a ham license.

I should also point out that rec.radio.shortwave is not about amateur
radio. It's about reception, and only when someone is talking about
listening to the amateur bands does amateur radio really become on-topic
here. The fact that some decide to spew their junk out of the
rec.radio.amateur.* hierarchy here does not make amateur radio on topic.

Michael

Some people never learned the code because they are lazy. Some were
afraid of the very idea of learning the code and never tried. And there
were some who really DID try to learn the code, but for some reason were
not able to. It is a fact that some people just CAN'T learn another
language. (I for one barely got through French in High School). I DID
manage to learn to copy code up to about 15 wpm though. I jealous of
those people that make 45 wpm copy look easy! Maybe it's easier if you
start real young (just as with piano lessons).

I have a good friend that I meet though a mutual interest in model
railroading. He also attends most hamfests. He was a CB type, wanted
to get a ham ticket, but the code was a roadblock. He eventually got a
code-free tech license. (he also eventually, learned the code, just
enough to gain Novice privileges).

So don't downgrade people for not being able to learn the code. It CAN
be a real roadblock for some people.