Interesting indeed. In the late 1970s I learnt Morse code listening to pre-recorded cassette tapes out on the tractor using headphones (it was a very noisy tractor). The tapes were produced by one of the NSW radio clubs. I used CW for quite a few years, and my speed came up to somewhere around 16+ WPM. Other modes were attractive, and so the key got pushed to the back of the desk. More recently I have taken to listening again, and find I can copy plain text at about 15wpm again - for a short time. I've discovered that my concentration lapses very quickly at my age, and I can't keep my mind focused on the task for more than about a minute or so.
There are a lot of amateurs out there who are still using CW - indeed I think the number has probably increased since the Morse test was no longer a requirement for gaining the qualification to operate on the HF bands. Some of them rattle away at some pretty impressive speeds. I know of a few who refused to have anything to do with Morse when it was mandatory, but went ahead and learnt it anyway once the requirement was dropped - and went on to use it on air - sometimes to the exclusion of other modes.
I once had a phone contact on 20 metres with someone (pax) who had been invited up to the front of a B-747 transiting across the northern part of central Australia at the time - he was using the A/C HF radio with the blessing of the captain. Very strange - even more so as I was using my amateur HF station on the tractor. As you can comprehend, it was quite a while ago. I also had a couple of very brief contacts on 2 metres from the tractor with Musa Manarov in the very early days of the MIR spacecraft.
Interesting things can happen in the hobby that is amateur radio.
Apologies for the digression ...
73
FOR (not my callsign)