Sunday, January 7, 2018

Troublesome characters to copy in Morse Code

The trouble with DITS

KX3 Displaying some sent code and a Palm Single paddle in front, magnetically attached to a steel base

As I've learned the code one problem area, early on, was dealing with words that started with characters that were all DITS.  I'm probably not alone in having my puny brain overloaded when I am trying to head copy words that start with DITS.  I would panic because the all-dits character would fly by and I'd get fixated on trying to figure out what that was and miss the rest of the word.

To overcome DIT panic, I started training on the all DIT characters of E, I, S and H

Using https://lcwo.net/  I'd configure it to send only those characters, and practice them alone.  Then I started creating words that began with DIT characters and I'd practice recognizing them.

After two and half years I still get tripped up on occasion but I'm doing much better.  

I also like to practice sending DITS.  The following sentence is fun to practice: "SHE IS 55 ES IS HIS SISTER"




So how do you deal with DIT overload?  


That's all for now.
So lower your power and raise your expectations...

72/73
de Richard AA4OO

2 comments:

  1. Ah yes the “dits” my reaction after hearing a call such as SH5IHS is “say what” and then as the dit dust clears my self talk is “ if I was that ham I would look at a changing my call”. Richard I still get hung up on the multiple dits and about a year ago my brain got used to the 5 and H, I have no issue with them anymore. In a QSO if I find myself getting caught up in the dit game I quickly ignore that word or pair of words and get back to copying as I find as I see the context from the other words the dit word is figured out.......but not always.
    73
    Mike

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  2. I came to ham radio from a musical background, and all the dits sound like note subdivisions to me.

    E - dit
    I - didit
    S - diggidit
    H - diggitydit
    5 - diggydiggydit

    Like solfege!

    de KC3JIN

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