On Jan 6, 8:13 am, Jeff Davis wrote:

Morse has transitioned from being the lingua franca of amateur radio to a
n
exclusive club.

And folks marvel at its decline...

And that worries me.

I'll almost certainly never be qualified to become a member of that
CWops club due to physical limitations, but I realize that Morse code
and it's use in Ham radio is a skill that should never go away. The
concept of working the world with a rudimentary radio and no
infrastructure is pretty powerful. The features of the mode make it
possible, the small bandwidth, the human powered DSP, that's all great
stuff. It absolutely needs to be encouraged. It just takes some work.
And we must be honest, it takes more work for some of us (like me)
than others. But that's okay, I considered the months I put in to get
to a paltry 8 wpm well worth it.

To me it's hard to call a club that has a lower limit of 25 wpm not
exclusive. They are promoting themselves to people who have already
made the grade. But enough about them - I don't begrudge them their
status, just that I think they are not going to achieve one of their
stated goals.

Do we want to promote OOK Morse? How about this idea......

Given that there is now a rather large divide between competent Morse
operators, and those starting out, there is some serious catching up
to do.

I would propose that a web based method of learning OOK Morse might
just do the trick. People have a tendency to be pretty fearful of
learning on the radio, the person on the other end might not be
terribly patient, and there are some people who just get bored
listening to slow Morse.

This system would give feedback on the copy and sending, practice
sessions, and testing.

This so far is kind of like the canned software. But where this
departs is that the student can send back and forth to other students.
Conversations can be made at really slow speeds, and with people of
like skill level. Text messaging can be incorporated to compare notes.
And another feature is a mentor can be added to the system. A
volunteer could work with the students to increase their proficiency.

The "hooks" of such a system are the web based interface, the semi-
chat room atmosphere, and the lack of pressure if no pressure is
desired.

It isn't breaking any technological ground either. The biggest issue
is who would host such a thing? My best guess is that the ARRL would
be a likely candidate.

I believe that would be a much better way to promote OOK Morse.

- 73 de Mike N3LI -