Morse Practice

[GWS]

Hi Folks,

Here's another morse program.  This one is to accompany a morse code generator that I've ordered from the USA.  Why? - well the generator should produce excellent sine waves, being based on a twin T oscillator circuit - hopefully quality CW tones at last.

Then there was the problem that all CW programs I've made in the past, ran out of steam at about 15 wpm.  It seems that .wav or .mid files, always had trouble reproducing rapidly changing dit and dah sounds.

So the solution suddenly occurred to me - use whole character sounds generated from a decent morse source.  I found this useful online morse translator program with a download facility.

https://morsecode.scphillips.com/translator.html

After a lot of downloading and file sorting, I finished up with a set of A-Z, 0-9 character sounds, at speeds from 12 wpm to 40wpm.

The next problem was how to get the program to access the right files without using large string arrays.  This led me to allocate meaningful names to each file such as C12A.wav (ie. code at 12 wpm for the letter A).  Similarly, C40X.wav will be the sound of an 'X' character at 40 wpm.

This seems to work pretty well. 

The idea is to listen to characters at a chosen speed. and using a standard morse key and the CW generator kit I've yet to assemble, to try to imitate the sounds as closely as possible.

Of course, it may still not be fast enough for Egil .. 

Program and sound data is attached.

best wishes,

Graham

[GWS]

I should point out, that even if you try Windows Media Player to play some of the characters, you will get poor results - it just doesn't seem able to handle the rapidly changing dots and dashes.

Try the sound C30P.wav for example.  Windows Media Player loses the last dot of the 'P' (.--.) completely.

The sounds play fine using the built in PlayWave function in Creative Basic and probably IWB - although I haven't tried that.

Best wishes,

Graham

[Egil]

Great program Graham!

I'll pass the exe and wav files on to a friend that struggles with learning morse code right now. We try to meet during weekends, so I can help him a little, but five hours drive each way, sets a limit for how often we can meet.

The link you provided is also a very good tool for people wanting to learn the noble art of morse code. I noticed that you can make code with one speed and send the characters separated according to lower speeds.
That is the way I learned the morse code. Each character was sent in speeds around 40 cpm, but with spacing between them as they were sent in 15 - 20 cpm. This way you learn the rythm of each character, and forget about the number of dots and dashes. Maybe difficult at first, but you soon get used to it.
When I was able to decode letters, numbers and punctuation whithout errors, I was given a key connected to an audio oscillator. My granddad was connected to the same oscillator, and there we sat in his shack talking to each other in morse code. Half an hour before going to school in the morning, and at least an hour after he had finished his afternoon lap...
Very soon I was allowed to go on the air as a "second operator".
When I finally received my license in 1963, he gave me a plaque showing the "Radio Amateurs Code" in norwegian.
Didn't realise it then, but I must have been very privileged.

Apropos fast enough... That is never faster than the operator in the other end is able to perseive.



Good luck with the morse code!

Egil

[GWS]

Hi Egil,

Glad you like it 

What a lovely story about your granddad    You must look back with great pleasure at those times.

best wishes,

Graham