I'm fairly certain it's an individual thing. In head copy, it starts to
sound like reading somewhere around 25 for me. If I'm making record
copy on a mill or keyboard at around 25-30, I'm not really aware of
anything I am copying. It seems to be a direct connection between ears
and fingers, and I cannot tell you afterwards what I copied. In my very
brief 10 months as the "station kid" at a coastal marine station in the
mid-50's, the Company tried to enforce an 18-20 WPM speed limit while in
traffic, they believed that was the sweet spot in terms of overall
throughput [circuit chatter usually ran faster].
Ted McElroy [SK] held [and may still hold] the record set in the 30's I
think, at 76 WPM with text taken from a newspaper. That he set the
record is certain although some have said he may have had the chance to
see the paper ahead of time. He also won typing contests which were
popular at the time. What may be apocryphal is a rendition that the
code began, he poured a cup of coffee and lit a cigarette, finally
sitting down and starting to copy maybe 5 mins later, and continued
typing for several minutes after the code stopped.
Code groups are said to be much harder than plain text ... the 2nd
Telegraph in the 50's was 20 plain text and 16 groups. For some reason,
I find groups easier and less work, no idea why. And, after close to 70
years with Morse, I agree with Tom ... there are lots of ways to learn
the code with varying efficiency for different people but they all work.
73,
Fred ["Skip"] K6DGW
Sparks NV DM09dn
Washoe County
K2 #4398
K3 #642
ex KX1 #697
On 12/28/2019 8:25 PM, Tom McCulloch wrote:
I agree, we all learn by the method our Elmer taught us. Mine was the
A,W,J method at 5 WPM.
I've been a CW guys almost exclusively and found 15 wpm to be my
personal comfort zone...However I have a question for those higher
speed guys out there. At what speed would you say you start hearing
complete words rather than the individual letters and as a result you
could pretty much copy in your head (Jim said he doesn't write
anything over 20 WPM). To me that's aweome (also unachievable..hi)
Thanks
Tom WB2QDG
K2 # 1103 (I think)
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