The Crusade

The aim of the Morse Crusade is to Educate Morse Trainers in the benefits of using methods of teaching Morse that WORKS! It is also Dedicated to Helping Learners to increase their Morse Proficiency which up to date has proved to be very successful.

Also the Morse Crusade wants to provide a directory of suitable Morse Mentors all over the world to help learners in their own area. Contact me if you are interested in being a Morse Mentor

Most of what you’ve been told about learning Morse Code is wrong,  Amateur radio operators traditionally have used the slowest, most frustrating, most painful and least effective techniques possible for gaining code proficiency.

Extract for David Finlay N1IRZ’s webpage “So You Want To Learn Morse Code”

We have to convince people that some of the old ways of teaching Morse needs to be looked at and practices which have been proved to be detrimental to the student should be dropped and to start teaching Morse in a way that will enhance the learning of the student, making it less frustrating for them to increase their Morse speeds.

Any kind of printed dots and dashes or any other such pictorial impressions will only impede the student’s progress when he is beginning to learn the code. All such methods violate good pedagogy, because they do not teach the code as actual sound patterns, as it will be heard and used.

Extract from Bill Pierpont’s book “The Art and Skill of Radio-Telegraphy”

The Crusade is open to all methods of teaching, and a successful modern way of teaching Morse was devised by German psychologist Ludwick Koch in the 1930’s and I was professionally taught Morse by this method in 1965. So how will we convert the old  brigade of instructors/tutors who teach slow Morse to the new method as they will generally reply;

“I have been using this method to train Morse for years quite successfully as has my Father and Grandfather, it has been passed down the family line from my Great Great Great Grandfather who was a telegrapher on the Mary Rose. We never had any problems with our method of teaching Morse, You can’t beat the old proven methods.”

Handicapped from the start of their Morse training by bad practices and slow Morse it is going to be harder for students taught the old ways to move forward and increase their speeds, than it is for someone learning Morse using the Koch Method from the start. Nancy Kott WZ8C from the North American Chapter of Fists has written an essay .“Instant Recognition” which will help the slow Morse operators move forward.

Please remember that the Morse Crusade is open to all views about learning and your are actively encourage to make a comment in any of my posts.