Hacker Remix

Morsle – A daily Morse code challenge

136 points by wkjagt 4 days ago | 38 comments

bityard 2 days ago

I have only limited experience (and not near enough patience!) trying to learn CW, but I have always heard that there are two things which are actively harmful to learning: 1) trying to visualize the dots and dashes, and 2) practicing at speeds slower than encountered on the air.

The best way to learn, according to the experts, is by learning to directly associate the sound that a letter makes with that letter. This takes lots of rote memorization at first, but it trains your brain to copy code "on autopilot," which is exactly what you want for something like this.

I liken it to music: musicians who learn to play by ear take the time to learn chords, scales, and intervals. It's a slog to start with and takes hours upon hours of boring practice. But once competent, they can play most pieces of music after one or two listens with only a little "noodling" to figure out the easiest 90% of the song.

I don't _think_ I'll ever learn CW well enough to do it in a contest but I've gotten a fair amount of mileage out of https://lcwo.net/morsemachine. It's essentially the audio equivalent to flash cards.

exitb 2 days ago

Another word of warning is that sadly, this knowledge doesn’t seem to stick if left unexercised. Few years ago I used this website to get good enough to be able to copy callsigns from real radio. Now I would have trouble to recall more than a few letters.

hn_throwaway_99 1 day ago

As is true with nearly any language. I originally got my ham license back in 1988 when I was a kid (was actually surprised/happy I could remember my original callsign and use that to look up my registration date). I got up to the 13 WPM needed to pass the General license back then, but then I eventually lost interest, especially when I went to college and the Internet (and especially the Web) was in its early stages. I sadly can hardly remember any of the codes these days.

zamadatix 1 day ago

It'd be interesting to see how quickly relearning it to ~the same level would be in terms of % of time spent originally.

I found something similar after going through several different keyboard layouts ~15 years ago. It turned out it only took a few hours for it to all come back so I make sure to use Qwerty and Dvorak at least once a year in case I ever need them (I landed on a 3rd).

ozim 2 days ago

I would say this is how one should learn any foreign language.

schrockwell 2 days ago

Hi folks! Love reading all the feedback. I originally released Morsle on April 1, 2023 as sort of a joke, but I’m glad that folks are still enjoying it.

The original idea was to make it more accessible to non-hams, which is why it has no Farnsworth spacing, visual aids, alphabetic keyboard, etc., but over time it’s become clear that really it’s just hams that are playing. So I should probably add more settings and proper training modes.

Thanks for playing!

asdfman123 2 days ago

The option to start at a lower wpm or just to play one character a time could be useful for us software engineers who still harbor dreams of learning morse code.

40 wpm is way too much. I just want to practice at one character at a time. Maybe even start with a reduced character set, like Duolingo only teaches you a few foreign language words at a time.

_whiteCaps_ 2 days ago

Disagree with 40wpm being way to much. You want to learn the 'sounds' of the characters, you don't want to count the individual dits and dahs.

Other posters have mentioned Farnsworth spacing, which increases the gap between characters, but keeps the speed of the individual letters.

https://lcwo.net is a good resource for learning as you start from K and work your way through the alphabet.

greenbit 1 day ago

Years ago I tried starting out with 5 wpm and 'working up', and just barely passed the 13 wpm test to get the 'Advanced' ticket. Only thing that stopped me getting Extra was that 20 wpm code test, that was still a thing in the 80s.

I let it all lapse for about 35 years and just got back into radio in '22, and tried copying some 5 wpm from W1AW, and could copy maybe 20 or 30% of that at best. So it came as something of a surprise, playing with Morsle for a few minutes, to discover I can do as well or better at 35 wpm as I can at 5.

You really get too much time at the slow speeds to engage the frontal cortex. If you learn to think your way to each letter, that doesn't scale very far.

uint8_t 2 days ago

Hee hee. But it is Farnsworthed, the default 40 WPM is quite spaced out!

pugworthy 2 days ago

It's fun to see this. My father (W7AAI) recently passed away, and we were just going through his QSL cards from the 60's and 70's. I never learned Morse code, but spent a lot of time hearing him using it as a kid. He first got his license in 1955, and my time in his HAM shack, playing with teletype tape, oscilloscopes and other such things was really pivotal for me becoming a CS major but handy with a soldering iron.

If you're curious about what it was like, here's something he wrote up in 2020 about his experiences with HAM radio in the early days. I see now I shared this once before on a YC post about QSL cards...

https://www.qcwa.org/w7aai-29229.htm

bityard 2 days ago

Sorry for your loss. I enjoyed the write-up. It's fascinating to see how much ham radio has changed. It used to be the height of novelty (and expense!) for the privilege of talking to someone across the world in real time via dits and dahs. A lot of people don't realize that even though telephones existed in that time, they were really only practical for local or regional calls.

_whiteCaps_ 1 day ago

I don't know what the US FCC rules are, but you might be able to inherit his callsign.

pugworthy 15 hours ago

Hmm actually yes you can!

https://www.fcc.gov/wireless/bureau-divisions/mobility-divis...

souterrain 1 day ago

For those interested in learning Morse Code by sound, https://lcwo.net (Learn CW Online) is a good resource, although not really usable on a mobile device.

For building speed, I had the most success listening to random characters via https://morsecode.world/international/trainer/character.html during my morning walks. Another option to consider are the Morse Code Ninja https://morsecode.ninja/ YouTube and Podcast content.

Lastly, if you learn better in more social environments, consider the Long Island CW Club, which, despite its name, has members globally. https://longislandcwclub.org/

penguin359 1 day ago

My favorite way to learn CW, and what push me over the top into actually using it, was CW Academy from CWops https://cwops.org/cw-academy/ where you work together with an instructor and other students. Running CW over a Zoom call instead of the radio made it much easier to get into and easier to copy without the QRM and other white noise. They do strongly push for use of a paddle, which I like anyways, but those that prefer a straight key might prefer other resources.