When Aaron Parks KC8FQD was having trouble learning Morse code, he complained about some of his frustrations to his wife, Dr. Jessica Parks. As an expert in memory and cognition with a PhD in experimental psychology, she immediately recognized a few ways he could dramatically improve his learning speed and retention.

Working together they created Skilman Introduction to Morse Code with a companion program called Morse Code Speed Builder: 5 to 12 Words Per Minute.

Based on the Farnsworth method, they designed it from the ground up to be different than other programs on the market. “The course is structured to walk you through the learning process step by step so you don’t get lost along the way. The individual exercises are designed to encourage engagement and participation,” he says.

Since launching the program this spring, they’ve already managed to create quite a buzz. “We’re pleased to have more than 150 happy customers so far and sales continue to accelerate,” he says. “So far, the feedback has been strongly positive.”

The program comes on 6 compact discs and the files can be loaded into an MP3 player for convenient playback. When you buy the program, you also get the digital files to use immediately if you don’t want to wait for your CDs to arrive.

Whether you decide to use their program or study on your own, they’ve put together a few tips to help you learn Morse code more effectively:

1) Divide your study into chunks that will fit into short-term memory

Eventually you’ll want to commit Morse code to your long-term memory, but before that it’ll have to go through your short-term memory. Work on 3-4 characters at a time. Once you think you have those committed to long-term memory, go on to the next group.

2) Practice meaningful rehearsal

This may sound obvious, but you won’t get far by putting a code tape on in the background and hoping to learn by osmosis. You’ve got to be an active participant in learning. Meaningful rehearsal is what moves those characters from short-term memory to long-term memory. So favor interactive exercises over passive ones.

3) Stay engaged by using a variety of exercises

If you do the same thing over and over, it’ll get boring and your eyes will glaze over. At the very least, mix up sending and receiving practice. They’re both important if you plan to get on the air and they’ll reinforce each other. If you zone out, you’re wasting your time.

4) Commit to a couple of short study sessions every day

A short study session is about 20-30 minutes. It may seem crazy, but it’s well known that human attention only holds up about that long. Once your attention falls off, you’re not getting a good return on the time you’re investing. Cramming works in the short-term, but for long-term retention, it’s better to space out your learning evenly over time. If you make it a part of your routine and work on it a little every day, you’ll get a little better every day — but one or two daily sessions is enough.

5) Don’t get discouraged by the interference effect

When you start out learning Morse code, the first several characters you learn will come pretty easy, but all of a sudden it changes. Everything slows down like it’s a struggle just to learn a single additional character. And what’s worse, it may seem like the ones you already know are getting harder to recall. Lots of people give up at this point.

Surprisingly, this sudden drop-off in apparent learning is actually good news. The reason why the new characters don’t come as easy is because the ones you already know are interfering with learning them. You have to have really learned those characters to have them interfere with learning more so you know that you must have already made significant progress.

Interference effect goes both ways, though. The new characters you’re learning interfere with the old ones. While it seems like all progress has ceased, you really must be learning the new characters to be experiencing this type of interference. This is the point where having a good attitude, a solid routine, and engaging exercises will really help.

Editor’s note:
Aaron and Jessica have graciously allowed AmateurRadio.com to give away the first hour of their Introduction to Morse Code course to our readers at no charge to help you get started. Good luck!

Skilman Introduction to Morse Code – Lesson 1 (24:02) Download

Skilman Introduction to Morse Code – Lesson 2 (24:32) Download

If you’re into podcasts, you know that among the half-billion or so out there – everyone on the planet has one, and most of us have two, kind of like repeaters – there are dozens or more that are part of networks devoted more or less to technology and “geek culture” (computers, phones, Internet, games). TWiT, Revison3, Frogpants, Geek’s Life, GFQ, TechCrunch, the Verge are a few names that come to mind quickly, but the list goes on and on. I only consume a few, though I hear the hosts and guests talk about many more that I haven’t made time for.

What I never hear is any mention of ham radio.

The only references I ever hear outside of our own shows are a few by Leo Laporte outside of Ham Nation, and Adam Curry and John C. Dvorak on No Agenda (both are hams). Otherwise, at least in the shows I listen to, we don’t exist.

We hams are geeks too, and proud of it, no?

Ah, but we’re mostly old geeks. The people – hosts, guests and audience – on these shows are the 20 and 30-somethings we keep saying we need in ham radio (and that’s why you’ve never heard of these shows!). They are interested in technology. Some of them would be interested in some aspects of ham radio, if they knew we existed. I think many others would at least be interested in hearing about us, the way we’re interested in hearing about other things even if we’ll probably never do them ourselves.

So would it help to get some ham visibility on these shows? I know we’ve got lots of our own shows, but they barely touch the general ‘tech’ audience.

And if we got some hams on those shows, what would they talk about? DX on 20? Mesh? And who would they be? Me? I’m 65. Bob Heil? He’s in his 70’s. We’re cool and all, and they’d be polite to us, but would they relate? I don’t think so.

And while you think about that, here’s HamRadioNow Episode 211: Adventures of a Hacker Turned Ham. (The video is at the bottom of this story. The link will take you to the HamRadioNow web page – same video, more links.)

It’s Michael Ossmann’s story, as he told it at the TAPR/AMSAT banquet last may in conjunction with the Dayton Hamvention®. Michael invented the HackRF SDR board, which got him noticed by TAPR, which reintroduced him to ham radio, and he’s now ADØNR. Embedded in Mike’s story is the theme where is the next generation of hams coming from, which kind of ties into my topic above.

Also at the banquet, AMSAT slipped in a short presentation about an upcoming geosynchronous satellite with an amateur radio transponder. Big news… for the Middle East, Europe, Africa and western Asia, as the satellite is owned by the Qatar Satellite Company, and it’s main mission is TV and communications for the Middle East. The ham transponder will have as wide a footprint as possible, but it can’t see North America, Japan, coastal China, Australia, and all but a little peek at South America. OK, so American hams can’t play, but we’re excited for hams on the other side of the globe, and it’s a foot in the door of the geosync satellite community. Oh, and it’s going to be 2.4 GHz up, 10 GHz down, so expect that to spur some radio development.

And I lead off with a pitch for the KICKSTARTER I’m running to fund me making video of the ARRL/TAPR DCC in Chicago this October. It was successful in 2013 and 2014, and it’s chugging along, with a deadline of July 31, and a goal of $10,000. That makes about 20 programs covering all the main sessions of the conference. I’m especially looking for support from small ham businesses that can afford a $500 ‘corporate underwriter’ pledge to get their name and product or service before the TAPR audience. Details in the KICKSTARTER.

And if you don’t have time to sit and watch (hey, this is already TLDR), you can subscribe to the HamRadioNow audio podcast (just an audio rip from our videos, but many of them make good ‘radio’ shows). You’ll have to manually enter the RSS address in your podcast app:
http://HamRadioNow.tv/hrnrss.xml

Once you’ve done that, you can subscribe and get the new shows as they’re produced, usually before they’re on YouTube or announced anywhere else (audio is so easy… why do I do video?).

73, Gary KN4AQ

This rig was designed and built many years ago. It spanned some impressive distances and worked well. The receiver was a direct conversion and the gain adjustment was before the mixer, so RF gain could be reduced easily which helped strong signal handling. No RX-TX offset was needed as this was just about right anyway. For quite a time it was the main rig used and every QSO felt like a million dollars! It was written up in GQRP SPRAT a very long time ago (30 years ago?). It is hard to get much more fun than using something this simple and working a long way regularly with it.

Before I had crystals for the CW part of the band my very first QSO was a USA SSB station that I called that was located near Chicago some 4000 miles away. I nearly fell off the chair when he replied.  After than I knew anything was possible. I really should rebuild it someday.

It crossed the Atlantic many times. I even used a 10/15m trap dipole (very low) occasionally and never used anything bigger than a low wire dipole. Output power was 800mW, quite enough I found for solid CW QSOs.

See https://sites.google.com/site/g3xbmqrp3/hf/15m_pipit .

This is the current look of my shack and my antenna farm. Everything packed up and ready to leave Longtan (a.k.a. Dragon Lake). Four years after we moved back to Taiwan we had saved enough money to buy a house and we found one to our liking in neighbouring Daxi (a.k.a. Big Creek). Because the lease of our Longtan house was due we decided to move in even though nothing is finished. Really, we don’t have doors yet and not even one wall is plastered and painted. The best parts of the house are the bathrooms and the kitchen which are 80% done. Radio activity is limited to monitoring local radio, especially the nearby airfield, and the medium wave band with a small loop antenna. Yes, even indoors this is possible now! My summer will be spend plastering and painting, but it will be worth it: my new shack will be 6 by 2.4 meters big. I’ll be back in the fall. Cheerio!

One of my least used rigs (it has still to be used at this QTH!) is my 4-band Elecraft K1 CW transceiver. This covers 40m, 30m, 20m and 15m CW at up to about 7W. It has the auto-ATU built in so just needs a 12-13.8V supply, CW key and end-fed antenna to be on the air.

At my old QTH it has worked lots including the USA on all bands with a simple end-fed wire antenna down the garden.  I really should consider selling it or trading it in as it is not being used.