In a message dated 2/22/2005 2:51:15 PM Eastern Standard Time, Bill Coleman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>On Feb 22, 2005, at 1:16 PM, Andrew Moore wrote: >The highest official CW speed was about 74 wpm, a record >that was set >decades ago and never overturned. If there's so many people >who can >copy north of 60 wpm, why has this record never been broken? That was a record for hard copy - McElroy pounded out the copy on a *manual* typewriter! "Head copy" is a different animal. The folks who can copy 80-100 wpm or whatever aren't pounding keyboards with every received letter; they're listening to the code like someone talking. How fast can the average person carry on a verbal conversation vs. transcribing one? In highspeed contest operation, you're only looking for information in bursts - usually just call and report, maybe section/country. What McElroy was doing was for minutes at a time. -- For comparison, consider the test for US Navy Radioman "A" class (IIRC) circa 1958: 24 wpm 5 character code groups, copied on a manual typewriter (mill). Passing grade was a maximum of 3 errors. In an hour. 73 de Jim, N2EY _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: [email protected] You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
