My friend, Rick, K8BMA, sent me an email this morning that included Nancy, WZ8C’s, article on instant character recognition. This article is often cited as gospel when it comes to learning Morse Code. While I agree with her thesis that instant character recognition (ICR), I’m not sure that her advice to “overlearn” Morse Code is any better than my mantra, which is “practice, practice, practice.”
I replied to Rick, “While I agree that instant character recognition is the key, the question is how to learn how to do that? I’m not sure that WZ8C’s approach will really do the trick. You’ve done a lot of code-practice type programs, perhaps you could write a program inspired by her comments. If you really wanted to get fancy, you could even incorporate speech recognition so that that program recognizes what the student is saying. And, once the student achieves ICR for the entire alphabet, you can move on to words.”
Of course, that got me thinking that this has probably already been done before, so I did an internet search and came up with the following:
- Morse Code World: Instant Character Recognition. This online tool seems to be very comprehensive. It allows you to choose character sets from several different code courses (CWops, LICW, LCWO, and Koch) and different feedback methods. It also lets you set the recognition time (WZ8C suggests 500 ms).
- WA7PGE: Instant Character Recognition. This is a command-line driven tool. If you’re not familiar with using the command line to run programs, you might want to skip this one.
- Morse Code Ninja Modern Code Course. Kurt, ADoWE’s code course contains both instant character recognition and instant word recognition.
If you use any of these programs, let me know how you like it. Either comment below or email me directly.
Good morning, the way I moved into ICR was while listening to G4FON contest trainer what I did was
increased the speed of the code being sent. I brought it to the point of hearing a complete sound and not dots and dashes. The trick was getting down the sound of 5 and H one after the other, as well as other brain twisters but in time your brain figures it out. Most of us already know one ICR set of letters and that is CQ. You just hear the sound and you know it’s CQ. So most if not all of us have ICR for CQ.
73,
Mike
VE9KK
Great article on code recognizing the alphabet. It has been over 50 years since I did any code on a practice osculator. After I get my General and Extra license I would like to get back into it.
LICW has just launched Project Overlearn which is likely based on Nancy’s article. All I know is I don’t have the sound of all the characters down. I still see dots and dashes in my head. It’s not by choice for me but from years of doing it wrong before I knew better.
I guess over learning can be boiled down to practice. I have yet to hear of a solid strategy to undo the damage of visualized code.
Mike’s tip about the G4FON trainer and cranking speed to 500 ms really clicked for me-kind of like finally hearing CQ as one sound instead of dots and dashes. I tried our free morse code generator during my commute, scrambling random words, and honestly, does anyone else mix up 5 and H too? https://morsecode-generator.com/
Comece a praticar com este guia passo a passo: como aprender código Morse
Dan, the 500 ms recognition target from WZ8C’s article is the part that changed how I practice. I spent months “counting” dits and dahs and couldn’t work out why I stalled at the same speed — the plateau she describes is real. What finally moved it for me was short daily sessions where I said each character out loud the instant it finished, writing nothing down. If I had to stop and think, that character went back into the drill pile.
On the tools: I tried the Morse Code World ICR trainer and liked that you can tighten the recognition window as you improve — it makes the plateau measurable instead of just frustrating. Rick’s speech-recognition idea is a good one too; speaking the letter keeps the feedback loop honest in a way typing doesn’t.
“Practice, practice, practice” still wins, I think — but it has to be recognition practice, not translation practice. 73, Abdul