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February 3rd 05, 03:57 AM

wrote:

Michael Coslo wrote:

I felt kinda bad about being mean to Len,

When were you mean to Len, Mike?

Unless you count disagreeing with him and proving him wrong as "being
mean", you've been nothing but nice to him.

Well, he probably thinks so!

so I'll try to meet him
halfway with a Morse code topic.

His definition of meeting halfway is that you agree with him 100%.

That is certainly possible...

So maybe we can ressurect this old one...

I hear lots of Hams declare that Morse code is a binary mode.

It is most certainly not.

Depends how you define "binary".

One state equals "0" or "off".
The other state equals "1" or "on".

Let us look at the situation.

Is the Dit a "0"?

No.

Is the Dah a "1"?

No.

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?

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

Unfortunately, there are two separate "1" states, and the zero state is
not a constant thing.

There is the matter of time. A zero might me the space between letters,
or one half of a dit. It might also mean the space between words. All
different things.

That Morse code can be turned into binary is not at argument here. It
obviously can, just as images, emails and everything else we do on the
computer. Are they binary because someone has written a program to turn
them into strings of 1's and 0's?

It isn't binary,

Depends on how you define "binary".

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

Different subject.

Not really. If you look at the string of 1's and 0's that Doug posted
as the binary result of my hypothetical CQ, is that something that you
would recognize as that CQ? That string IS binary.

Why does the - and . method of typing out the code convey the
information? the dashes and the spaces convey time information to the
person looking at them. I'm counting more than two states here.

It's not binary.

Most Morse operators with any skill (that excludes Len) process a
complete character as one "sound". "didahdidit" is recognized as "L",
in the same way that when you hear the word "cat", you think of the
animal. The Morse operator does not think in terms of dits and dahs any
more than a person thinks in terms of the consonant and vowel sounds
(phonemes) making up "cat".

Of course *really* skilled Morse ops hear entire words as units of
sound. And at some level, they begin to think in Morse, just as fluent
speakers of a language think in that language.
Of course Len wouldn't know about that...

73 de Jim, N2EY

- Mike KB3EIA -

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