Morse Code
 

:sad: How many of you guys had to sit the Morse Code test and how or where did you do it. How did you learn the morse? Jesus i borrowed some tapes....yes tapes from, i think, Val Dal Hyson..."Learning The Morse Code" 3 or 4 volumes of sheer hell !! S**t it nearly cost me a marriage. I did my 'test" whilst doing a freight run from PMQ to TW at midnight. The guy on Flight Service gave me the test whilst i was fighting the aircraft in IMC, rough and a big handful. I kept on saying..."hang on a sec, hang on a sec" but he kept on increasing the frequency. I "passed" after he gave me sympathy. i can still recite the bl**y things to this day. :ok:

.- --. --. --. --.:{

.. /..-. ..- -.-. -.- .. -. --./ .... .- - . -../ -- --- .-.... . :E

I learned it with a morse table taped to my car steering wheel coding number plates.

edited for clarity.

I started by grouping the letters, I.e. A,B.C,D then E F G H and so on. Then I practiced on car number plates.
It took a few hours to learn the basics then I practiced to gain the speed required on my drive to banks town which was another 5 hours and to my supprise I passed. I was anticipating just seeing what the test was like then coming back for a serious attempt.
I found it a bit like learning to read music.

.. / .--. .- ... ... . -.. / ... . -. -.. / .- -. -.. / .-. . -.-. . .. ...- . / .- .-.. .--. .... .- / -. ..- -- . .-. .. -.-. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. . / .- - / - . -. / .-- --- .-. -.. ... / .--. . .-. / -- .. -. ..- - . / .. -. / .---- ----. --... ..--- .-.-.-

:{

Sending AND receiving 10wpm hey taily - I was .---- .---- in .---- ----. --... ..--- :ok:

G'Day '39',
I dunno how a FSO could give it to you whilst you were commiting aviation....
However, I mean you MAY have had an IFR chart to refer to..??:=

The decode used to be in the margin.....:uhoh:

I can say that I did mine at Cessnock when I was instructing there, to the delight of my students who were also likewise engaged - and to the chagrin of a colleague instructor who was doing his best to stop laughing... at the time....
But, it was in a very 'controlled' environment - not everyone passed first time up.:=

I learned it simply by singing the ole d' d' dah dit' dah dah dah and practising decoding car numberplates - ALL the time - and it drove my mates NUTS!!:ugh:

But I passed!!

I have seen a certain Comm Officer who used to be at SY FSC who could hold a Morse 'conversation' with his mates whilst reading the morning paper....

Amazing!!

Ten words a minute. A 'word'was 5 characters. 3 minute test listening to a tape, conducted at Fright Service Rocky. 80% pass mark. Not likely to forget it.

Did the same thing with car number plates, must have been the common practice.

Actually the word "Paris" .--. .- .-. .. ... is the standard for one "word" in Morse code.

I practiced receiving Morse by listening on HF around 14.1 Mhz. Some of those Amateurs could boot out CW at a hell of a pace!

My Morse test (at P&T Port Moresby for Marine and Amateur Licensing) also included the Q Codes.

The best I remember was the Coastal Radio operators in the 1950s. They could receive one message in CW/Morse whilst sending another, simultaneously monitoring the Emergency HF frequency and holding a conversation!

Learnt by just writing them down then pulling letters out of a hat and writing the . and - down. Weeks before the exam spent most of the time looking at things and then spelling them out in my head dit dah dah dit. Exam was in a room with about 15 others and some old duck turning on a tape recorder. All tones were played twice (fairly quickly) and you just had to write down the letter. It was all a bit odd considering that the IFR charts would have the Station name then below the morse code for the ident. Seemed a bit harsh to have to get the rating given the maps had the info anyway. Guess the law makers came to the same conclusion and eventually scrapped the morse exam from the IFR syllabus.

Yeah - the very month AFTER I passed the bloody exam.

And just to prove the regulators are EVERY BIT as thick as we think they are they removed the morse boxes from the charts at the same time.

They put them back eventually.:rolleyes:

A few suggestions to learn Morse Code - Try the free programme WinMorse2.0 which converts text to morse code.

Suggest grouping letters in blocks of five, starting with A to E in various group combinations then move on to the next five letters when you can read those letters okay.

Don't think dots and dashes, think dits and dahs. As you speed up try to recognise the 'sound' of the letter rather than the individual dits & dahs. Once you've got going try reading plain text and coverting it to morse characters in your mind.. don't do it out loud :} you'll get strange looks...

I was in a past life a MN Radio Officer (35 years) I routinely copied morse at speeds up to 40wpm+, it all becomes automatic after a time. Don't blame me though if it drives you bonkers :sad:

All the IFR pilots that tuned in the Kerema NDB for over six months whilst it erroneously had the Kavieng ident probably thought the same thing - obviously not one of them interpreted the Morse ident and realised it was wrong! :}

I have an original "Q-Code" booklet back home in Aus, dating back to 1927. Before voice comms all communication was completed by sending a morse "Q" message. 'QRT' by memory was "stop sending" etc.(or was it QTT?). Today, all is left is 'QNH' and I suppose 'QFE', 'QDM' and 'R'. We still get asked to do a 'QDM' in the Sim by the older instructors. Why were all the messages prefixed by 'Q'? I was told it was because of the distinct sound of 'Q'....."here comes the bride", dah, dah, dit dah. This gave adequate warning of the message to come. Amazing how much useless information is stored in ones brain. I learnt morse by tapping out the menu with my dinner fork, drove the wife up the wall.

Ditto!

If I can recall correctly I did 3 letter groups in NZ and 4 letter groups in Oz.

Dr :8

Your memory serves, QRT is 'stop sending'.
QUQ is one to note - 'Shall I train my searchlight nearly vertical on a cloud, occulting if possible and, if your aircraft is seen or heard, deflect the beam up wind and on the water to facilitate your landing'

Risk of showing dedication here. The first thing I bought from the new Tandy in our area when I was about 11 was a Morse key. You needed to know Morse if you were to become a pilot.

Could never get the sending (hopeless). Tried with the Radio Club at school.

There is several different software out there to teach yourself morse . I downloaded a trail version and installed on my fathers computer . After 40 years of being out of the army he still knew it . As I remember it tapped aout a few words every five minutes . My father would look up from his book and blurt out the words.... kept him sharp :-D

Learnt it in the mid 70's in Rocky from a record , which was put out by a Aussie Lady called Nancy...(Surname forgotten)...did the test in The Rocky F.S.U./Briefing facility under the tower...

I did the receive @ 10wpm exam in some amateur radio buff's backyard shed in about 1990 (apparently the last approved examiner in Victoria), a year or two after the requirement for the IFR exam was removed, just to have "done it" and get it on the licence.

Always glad I made the effort to listen to those tapes driving to work and back for a month or so.

G'Day 'Tailie',

This NEARLY brought a TAA 727 to grief one night approaching PH.

Pingelly NDB USED to be ident 'PGL'.....
and Parkerville, much much much closer to PH was 'PRL'.....

The said 727 actually 'disappeared' & got below VHF range of PH for a bit, and, I believe, actually 'disappeared from the RADAR - until someone realised they were about to become 'history'.

Pingelly ident changed to 'PIY' soon thereafter........OUCH!

The --. and the .-. were a bit close.........and 't'was too easy to miss the ident... ..-., ..-, -.-., -.-

--., .-., .., ..-., ..-., --- ..........:eek: