Morse Trainer G4FON

Morse Trainer

When I returned to Amateur Radio my CW was decidedly rusty. What I felt I needed was a CW Trainer to get my speed back. I looked around the Web and found an article by Dave Finley N1IRZ on a method of CW training developed by a German psychologist called Ludwig Koch back in the 1930's.

Reading though Dave's article, I decided that it all made a lot of sense. Basically you start off learning the code at the speed you would like to achieve. Unlike the Farnsworth method which seeks to reduce the gap between the letters as you become more efficient, Koch came up with the idea that you should start off just learning two letters at full speed and add an additional letter once you reach 90% proficiency until you have mastered them all. Since you are only learning one new letter or figure at a time, your frustration is significantly reduced.

Dave Finley gave a suggested order for learning the letters and figures and recommended a programme called Super Morse to use as a trainer. I quickly realised that Super Morse offered more features than were required to learn Morse by the Koch method and decided to write my own programme orientated towards the Koch method.

The resulting programme runs under Windows 9x, NT and XP and requires a sound card. You are welcome to download a copy and see how you get on.

If you have a suggestion, send it to me and I will endeavour to incorporate it in a later release. Positive feedback from users of the software make it clear that the Koch method is a very effective way of both learning Morse and also improving your Morse skills.

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