Morse Code Tutor

by Steve Hunt


Many amateur radio enthusiasts continue to use morse code as a means of communicating, and it is still necessary to pass a morse code test before you can obtain a licence to operate on the Short Wave Amateur Bands. Apart from the licence requirement, the use of morse code conveys a sense of achievement which few other modes of communication can provide. It is also a very effective mode of communication under noisy radio conditions where speech would be unintelligible.

Morse is an excellent morse code tutor, and incorporates a number of features vital to rapid learning. Messages can be sent at a range of speeds, characters can be repeated, and characters can be sent with artificially long gaps between them.

This latter feature is a powerful learning aid. One of the most effective ways of learning morse is to listen to characters at full speed (say 12 words per minute) from day 1, but to leave long gaps between characters which can then be shortened as ability improves.

Morse also allows the pitch and volume of the sound to be adjusted, and even allows background noise to be introduced in order to simulate real radio conditions. Messages can be generated by the program in a range of formats, or you can enter your own messagers. At the end of a training session, a record of the last 50 messages sent can be saved to disc or output to a printer for checking purposes.

USING THE PROGRAM
To install Morse, double-click on its icon in the Filer window, or click on its icon in the RISC User Menu System. As the application is stored in a compressed file, a Filer window will now open containing the actual Morse application. Double-click on this icon to run the program. Clicking Select on its icon bar icon will open the MorseTutor window.

Firstly, adjust the pitch and volume settings to your preference by clicking over the up or down arrow either side of the Pitch and Volume fields in the Sound box. Medium pitch and Volume 10 make a good starting point. Set Noise to 8, Speed to 12 wpm, Pause to 1 and Repeats to 1. Click Menu and select the Weight option. The Hide text option in the menu will stop the text from being displayed while the morse code is being transmitted, while the Single char option will allow you to see only the character being transmitted.

The writable field at the bottom of the window which currently reads
"MORSE TUTOR, AUTHOR: STEVE HUNT G3TXQ +" contains the message to be
transmitted. We now want to update this with a plain language message,
so click over Plain language in the Text box and you will see the
message field updated with a new message. Now click on Start and the
message will begin. Note that the Text icons have been greyed,
indicating that you cannot update the message whilst transmission is
in progress, and that the message field itself is also deselected. You
can however alter any of the sound parameters.

Once the message has finished, the Text options will be available again; click over Plain language again to load a new message. In fact, Morse chooses randomly from a selection of 20 plain language messages so you might see the same one again; if this happens, click again.

To print out the messages, load a printer driver, click Menu over the MorseTutor window, and move the pointer to the right of the Save option. If you wish to save the information you can drag the icon to a Filer window; in our case we drag the icon to a printer driver icon on the icon bar and printing will begin. Morse will tag the printout with the date and time and a note of the morse speed last used.

FURTHER DETAILS
Once a transmission is underway, you can restart it by clicking on the Restart icon. You can also cut a transmission short by clicking on the Stop icon.

Morse records the most recent 50 messages that have been transmitted in their entirety. It does not record messages that you have truncated by clicking on the Stop icon. The Save option is not available until you have transmitted at least one message completely.

You can clear the message store by clicking on the Clear store menu option.

The following punctuation marks are supported:  ? . , /

The following characters have been allocated special functions and can
be included in a message:

  + End of message (Dit-Dah-Dit-Dah-Dit)
  = Break sign (Dah-Dit-Dit-Dit-Dah)
  @ Error(Dit-Dit-Dit-Dit-Dit-Dit-Dit-Dit)
  > End of work(Dit-Dit-Dit-Dah-Dit-Dah)
  - Wait(Dit-Dah-Dit-Dit-Dit)


 Copyright RISC User 1994
