If any of you are already fluent in Morse, I'd love to hear from you! Were you able to hear full words or phrases "natively"? Did you ever have the experience of being able to identify the person on the other end merely by accent?
Other great answers here -- I'll add my $.02, well, just because.
Ham here as well (K2KD). I had most of my experiences as a kid (6th - 8th grade), had an HF rig in my bedroom, and made my way through Extra class (which, I think, required a 20 WPM morse test).
I'd liken hearing common CW phrases not so much as hearing "the phrase" in its entirety / natively, but more akin to listening to a song or tune you're familiar with. Your brain knows what the next word / note is going to be, so that's queued up in your head (and why you can hum along with a tune you know).
Same with morse code -- you'll start to hear a familiar pattern and you'll just know how it's going to continue. Things like "CQ" were VERY common to hear and you always knew that pattern (-.-. --.-). Or signing off, you knew when someone was starting to say 73 (--... ...--) so you'd end up "singing along" with the words to the song you knew (metaphorically-speaking).
I was quite experienced with it and even now, 20 years later, I still know the alphabet. But I'd never say I got to true language-less fluency -- the code always translated into letters for me (either written or in my head), except in the cases above (I can hear a CQ now and not think "CQ" but instead hear it as the universal beacon call...da dit da dit..da da dit da......da dit da dit..da da dit da...)
First I want to answer one of your other questions -- could a skilled Morse operator identify a person by his sending style, what we called his "fist". The answer is yes, absolutely. But there's more to it than that -- each CW (continuous wave) transmitter had different characteristics, in the days when most of them were built by their operators -- some of them changed frequency slightly during each dash, some of them had noticeable clicks caused by too fast a transmitter activation and deactivation around each Morse element -- these helped one identify a specific operator along with his personal sending style.
A few years ago, about the time that the FCC abandoned the code sending/receiving requirement, I assumed that CW was dead. But lately, listening to the ham bands, I see there's a surprising amount of CW activity still present.
> Were you able to hear full words or phrases "natively"?
Over time one begins to hear entire words, especially at high sending rates. This is especially true for common words, words that are part of every contact ... example "Name is (name)": "-. .- -- . .. ... .--. .- ..- .-.."
As this example MP3 shows, in modern times we can avoid the quirks of manual keying by letting a computer create perfectly shaped Morse characters for us. :)
I encourage any hacker to take a look some time at the beautiful 'bugs' still (!) made by Vibroplex [1].
I have wanted to learn Morse ever since I read The Victorian Internet by Tom Standage [2]. I know people use keyboards nowadays---and even software to read Morse and translate it automatically into text---but I want to learn to send it by hand. Do you recommend a straight key or a bug to begin with? (I just love the look of those beautiful machines with tiny pendulums and jewelled bearings and neodymium magnet 'springs'...). I also wonder about electronic keyers with paddles. What works best for a beginner who wants to develop a good 'fist'?
> Do you recommend a straight key or a bug to begin with?
I'm biased because (before the computer era) I never used anything but a straight key. I recommend a normal telegraph key for beginners -- they're easier to control and they produce an appreciation for the simplest possible form of radio and wired communication:
-- is of a real antique, but one still available today. Unchanged, it dates back to the land telegraph era, during which one operator, when finished sending, would throw the switch visible at the top center, thus closing his end of the circuit and allowing the other end to reply, in what was a simple two-wire one-battery telegraph circuit.
Interestingly, in 1859, there was a huge solar and geomagnetic storm, much bigger than anything that has happened since, and one of the few contemporary indications was that the telegraph system went crazy:
A quote: "Telegraph systems all over Europe and North America failed, in some cases shocking telegraph operators. Telegraph pylons threw sparks. Some telegraph systems continued to send and receive messages despite having been disconnected from their power supplies."
It is estimated that, were such a storm to occur today, it would bring modern electronics -- and society -- to its knees.
> What works best for a beginner who wants to develop a good 'fist'?
Well, one, listening to good sending certainly helps. Also not trying to send too quickly at first, and listening more than sending until one acquires a sense of what good telegraphy sounds like.
I agree with your remarks and extend them such that bugs and keyers usually are not built to operate slowly enough for folks starting out to use them.
Start with the straight key, and at some point you'll be able to hear faster than you can comfortably send for long periods, and start wondering what technology would allow you to send quicker... that's the time to start looking at bugs and paddles and electronic keyers and memory keyers and morse keyboards and all that kind of stuff.
Maybe bad analogy time is learn to type on a classic traditional keyboard (model M?), then start looking at the infinite array of ergonomic keyboards.
Thank you! I'll begin with a traditional key, and listening.
My keyboard is an IBM Model F [1] through an interface from Hasgstrom Electronics. It has the Control key and Escape key in the old places, essential for vi.
There was a time when you could identify the entire country of Cuba by the "accent" of their CW signals. For whatever reason, probably the popularity of certain homebrew gear designs there, most Cuban CW signals had a characteristic "chirp" due to the frequency shifting a little at the start of each dot and dash. That, and sometimes their average frequency would drift up or down the band, and you'd have to chase them around.
I had a lot of fun with radios as a kid (15--20 years ago). It was so magical to talk all across the world from your bedroom. Then this whole Internet thing happened. ;)
As a ham operator, there are standard phases and exchanges that make contacts easier. (Especially in a contest.) After time it becomes second nature. In "normal" or "ragchews" exchanges with older hams, you may have to brush up on medical and anatomic words and phases.
I learned morse at age 11 when I first got interested in ham radio. It took a couple of months of frequent use before it really felt natural, and this was probably about when I started perceiving words rather than characters.
