"Michael Coslo" wrote in message
...
Doug McLaren wrote:
In article ,
Michael Coslo wrote:

| I hear lots of Hams declare that Morse code is a binary mode.
|
| It is most certainly not.

It most certainly is.
...
| Is the space between characters a "0"? and the Dih a "1"? Oh wait,
what
| is the Dah then? Oh, and what about the space between words?

Try looking at it at a lower level -- stop looking at the dits and dahs.

At a lower level, anything is digital when you look at it that way. A
photograph, digital audio, whatever.

If Morse code was really digital, there would be no need to have a lower
level

Morse code is either on or off. 1 or 0. You're either emitting a
signal, or you're not -- there's no in between.

Ahh, so the space between the dits and dahs means nothing? There is
definitely an "in between" It is how we determine what the words a

..... is that the number 5, or is it HE or is it SI, or IS or EH?

Looking up what binary means -- http://www.answers.com/binary --

bi na ry (b'n-r) pronunciation
adj.
1. Characterized by or consisting of two parts or components;
twofold.

At the lowest level, there's only two components -- on or off, tone or
no tone. It certainly fits the definition.

Considering that `tone' = 1 and `no tone' = 0 ...

Longer periods of 1's = dahs
Shorter periods of 1's = dits
Short period of 0's = space between a dit or a dah.
Longer period of 0's = space between characters.
Even longer period of 0's = space between words.

You have just described more than two states.

It's not a particularly efficient binary code, but it *is*, at the
lowest level, binary -- there's only two states. It's certainly not
analog, or tinary, or ...

Disagree. It isn't analog for sure, but with only a 1 and a zero, it
cant be described. Trying to describe it with 1's and 0's means that you
have to translate it. That longer dah, is not a 1. It cannot be the same
thing as the short dit. If both of them are 1's, the analogy fails

Now, to be fair, at a higher level, you could say it has four states
-- dit, dah, space between character, space between word. Which would
be quadrary (is that the right word? is it even a real word?) But
that doesn't mean it can't be binary at another level at the same
time.

| It isn't binary, and the way our noodles process it isn't binary.

I'm not sure that the way our brain processes it is relevant. RTTY is
binary (or do you disagree there too?) and yet our brain hardly
processes it's output in a binary manner.

| It's not binary.

If you say so. I doubt I've convinced you, but it's really all a
matter of how you look at it, and if you insist on looking at it in
only one way, nobody's going to convince you otherwise.

I'm saying that in order to have Morse code be binary, you have to
digitize it, so to speak. You have to have a clocking action, and a dah
has to either be something other than a "1" if the dit is considered a
"1". If it was truly digital, you wouldn't have to do any of that.

even the 'real' digital modes have a clocking action. how else do you know
when one character ends and another starts? the one big oddity of morse is
that the characters are unequal lengths so it is not easy to make a simple
clock mechanism to decode them like it is for baudot or ascii codes. then
of course another oddity is that it is often sent by hand (or at least it
used to be) so the timing varies even within a short message making it even
harder to decode mechanically. however hscw and very low speed or coherent
cw are normally machine encoded and decoded and rely on very exact timing.

Doug McLaren wrote:
In article ,
Mike Coslo wrote:

| Let us put it to the test, Dave.
| Write out a short sentence, or even a CQ de (your callsign) in
binary
| format, and let me read it right off the screen. If Morse code is
| binary, it will be no problem.

That's actually a reasonable test. And I shall give you an answer,
though I don't think you expected one. And I'm not Dave.

Here is a binary representation of `CQ DE K' (this gets rather
tedious,
so I'll only do the first few characters) :

10111010111000111011101011100000001110101000100011 1010111000

And to explain that further --

dit = 1
dah = 111
space between dit/dah = 0
space between letters = 000
space between words = 0000000

So, `CQ DE K' translates to :

C 10111010111
000
Q 1110111010111
0000000
D 1110101
000
E 1
000
K 111010111
000

(the letters and newlines are there *only* to help make it readable.)

To play this back is very simple --

-- Pick a time period -- for example, 1 = 1/10 th of a second.
-- go through the list, going through each chracter --
1 = play a tone for 1/10th of a second
0 = be completely silent for 1/10th of a second

It's really that simple.

If you want a program to do it --

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# C Q D E K B 3 E I A P S E
K
my $string = ".-.- --.-\n-.. .\n-.- -... ...-- . .. .-\n.--. ... .
-.-" ;
foreach my $c (split (//, $string)) {
if ($c eq ".") { print "10" ; next } ;
if ($c eq "-") { print "1110" ; next } ;
if ($c eq " ") { print "00" ; next } ; # Only two 0s, because
the last
# character ended with
a 0.
if ($c eq "\n") { print "000000" ; next } ; # ditto, but 6.
}
print "\n" ;

And the output of your complete CQ in binary is :

10111010111000111011101011100000001110101000100000 00
11101011100011101010100010101011101110001000101000 101110000000
101110111010001010100010001110101110

new lines and spaces are added by me only to help it fit on the
screen.

| This is a screen readable approximation of me calling CQ
|
| .-.- --.- -.. . -.- -... ...-- . .. .- .--. ... . -.-

| it is not binary.

Binary.

--
Doug McLaren, , AD5RH
.. Time is the best teacher, unfortunately it kills all of its
students.

Doug, please perform the same exercise for all variations of the
Farnsworth code. Thanks.

Doug McLaren wrote:
In article ,
Michael Coslo wrote:

| I hear lots of Hams declare that Morse code is a binary mode.
|
| It is most certainly not.

It most certainly is.
...
| Is the space between characters a "0"? and the Dih a "1"? Oh wait,
what
| is the Dah then? Oh, and what about the space between words?

Try looking at it at a lower level -- stop looking at the dits and
dahs.

Morse code is either on or off. 1 or 0. You're either emitting a
signal, or you're not -- there's no in between.

Looking up what binary means -- http://www.answers.com/binary --

Look up what "Morse Code" means. If you can. The FCC no longer has a
definition.

In article .com,
bb wrote:

| If you want a program to do it --
|
| #!/usr/bin/perl -w
| # C Q D E K B 3 E I A P S E
| K
| my $string = ".-.- --.-\n-.. .\n-.- -... ...-- . .. .-\n.--. ... .-.-" ;
| foreach my $c (split (//, $string)) {
| if ($c eq ".") { print "10" ; next } ;
| if ($c eq "-") { print "1110" ; next } ;
| if ($c eq " ") { print "00" ; next } ; # Only two 0s, because
| the last
| # character ended with
| a 0.
| if ($c eq "\n") { print "000000" ; next } ; # ditto, but 6.
| }
| print "\n" ;
....
| Doug, please perform the same exercise for all variations of the
| Farnsworth code. Thanks.

Um, I'll pass :)

I'm not sure what the value would be, but if you really think it's
worthwhile, you can work out the timings yourself, and use my program
to print out your 1s and 0s. (perl is available on most operating
systems, including Windows, if you need it.)

All you'd have to do is change the `00' and `000000' print statements
to include more zeros. (But don't forget that there's already a 0
printed as a part of the last character when calculating the timings.)

In any event, the expected timings for `standard' morse code are well
defined -- a dah is 3x as long as a dit, the space between dits and
dahs is as long as a dit, the space between characters is 3x as long
as a dit, and the space between words is 7x as long as a dit. The
Farnsworth method merely makes the 3x and 7x gaps longer.

(My little program uses \n's to indicate the end of a word. This is
needed because the `.-.- --.-' notation really has no standard way of
indicating the difference between a 3-dit long pause and a 7-dit long
pause.)

--
Doug McLaren,
internet, eh? I hear they have that on computers now.

wrote:

Key up is "0". Key down is "1". Also known as "space" and "mark",
respectively.

73 de Jim, N2EY

Odd, the old definition of Morse Code didn't use the terms "0" and "1",
nor "mark" and "space." All the timing was in terms of the length of a
single "dit." Hmmmm? Almost makes one think that Jim don't know Jack
about Morse Code. But he'll tell us otherwise.
Just more Miccollis revisionist history, I guess.

On Wed, 02 Feb 2005 17:50:02 GMT, Doug McLaren wrote:

dit = 1
dah = 111
space between dit/dah = 0
space between letters = 000
space between words = 0000000

So, `CQ DE K' translates to :

C 10111010111
000

In what world is "C" = dit-dah-dit-dah ??? Send that in an
FCC-administered code test and fail.

--
73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane

Doug McLaren wrote:
In article ,
Mike Coslo wrote:

| Let us put it to the test, Dave.
| Write out a short sentence, or even a CQ de (your callsign) in binary
| format, and let me read it right off the screen. If Morse code is
| binary, it will be no problem.

That's actually a reasonable test. And I shall give you an answer,
though I don't think you expected one. And I'm not Dave.

Sorry about that, Doug.


Here is a binary representation of `CQ DE K' (this gets rather tedious,
so I'll only do the first few characters) :

10111010111000111011101011100000001110101000100011 1010111000

-.-. --.- -.. . -.-

Those certainly look different.

And to explain that further --

dit = 1
dah = 111
space between dit/dah = 0
space between letters = 000
space between words = 0000000

So, `CQ DE K' translates to :

C 10111010111
000
Q 1110111010111
0000000
D 1110101
000
E 1
000
K 111010111
000

(the letters and newlines are there *only* to help make it readable.)

To play this back is very simple --

-- Pick a time period -- for example, 1 = 1/10 th of a second.
-- go through the list, going through each chracter --
1 = play a tone for 1/10th of a second
0 = be completely silent for 1/10th of a second

It's really that simple.

If you want a program to do it --

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# C Q D E K B 3 E I A P S E K
my $string = ".-.- --.-\n-.. .\n-.- -... ...-- . .. .-\n.--. ... . -.-" ;
foreach my $c (split (//, $string)) {
if ($c eq ".") { print "10" ; next } ;
if ($c eq "-") { print "1110" ; next } ;
if ($c eq " ") { print "00" ; next } ; # Only two 0s, because the last
# character ended with a 0.
if ($c eq "\n") { print "000000" ; next } ; # ditto, but 6.
}
print "\n" ;

And the output of your complete CQ in binary is :

10111010111000111011101011100000001110101000100000 00
11101011100011101010100010101011101110001000101000 101110000000
101110111010001010100010001110101110

new lines and spaces are added by me only to help it fit on the
screen.

| This is a screen readable approximation of me calling CQ
|
| .-.- --.- -.. . -.- -... ...-- . .. .- .--. ... . -.-

| it is not binary.

Binary.

I think your explanation kind of proves my point.

You do a pretty good job of showing how a person turns Morse code into
digital 1's and 0's. But that does not make Morse code digital any more
than doing the same for an image makes a photograph digital. The Morse
code had to be translated into binary.

The binary output of that CQ in binary doesn't look like anything that
any Ham I know can read. If you are coding a CW reader, the output will
be translated into words. If Morse was binary, the op could just read
the string of 1's and 0's.

- Mike KB3EIA -

Dave wrote:

"Mike Coslo" wrote in message
...

Dave wrote:

thats funny, the program i am writing represents it very nicely with

just

1's and 0's.

Looking at it that way, all things that can be put into a digital
program are digital, such as photographs, word processing, database, etc.

Let us put it to the test, Dave.
Write out a short sentence, or even a CQ de (your callsign) in binary
format, and let me read it right off the screen. If Morse code is
binary, it will be no problem.

This is a screen readable approximation of me calling CQ

.-.- --.- -.. . -.- -... ...-- . .. .- .--. ... . -.-

it is not binary.


11101011101001110111010111001110101001001110101110 01011101110111011100111001
11001110000
looks perfectly binary to me

Now send *that* in a QSO. Using *only* a 0 state or a 1 state. 8^)


- Mike KB3EIA -

In article ws.com,
Phil Kane wrote:

| C 10111010111
| 000
|
| In what world is "C" = dit-dah-dit-dah ??? Send that in an
| FCC-administered code test and fail.

Nice catch. I did pass element 1, but I never claimed to be good at
it. In any event, I'd thought I just cut and pasted his CQ string,
but obviously I made a mistake somewhere.

But to retort --

1) The FCC doesn't administer ham radio tests any more
2) The tests are generally receiving, not sending, and
3) You don't need 100% accuracy to pass

:)

(Wow, something actually related to policy!)

--
Doug McLaren, , AD5RH
MONEY IS THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL! SEND $9.95 FOR MORE DETAILS!