So I really really like the Koch trainer from g4Fon, and should
probablywrite up a review for HandiHams, because it was not one of the
resources that Pat recently mentioned in his blog post.
 
In all fairness, I didn't start at ground zero, I already copy fairly
reliably at 15WPM. But I decided to start as if I'd never learned so I could
erase that blasted lookup table in my head. And just like typing, those
reflexes are kicking in.
 
On Kelvin's blog, I've also entered a comment which I am going to repeat
below. He has a great MP3 walk-through of the program. If you know blind
hams who want to learn CW and not struggle to try out lots of mostly
inaccessible software, this one is it!
 
 
***
Thanks for telling me about this program. I've discovered a few things. 1)
you have to fiddle with the "effective" and the "actual" speed for your
particular copying skill. For me setting one of them to 20 and the other to
10 worked best. Wish he had some better terminology, as I can never remember
the difference between "effective" and "actual" and keep reversing them in
my mind. Also the tab order for the settings is illogical; he should at
least put effective and actual near each other in tab order, since I keep
messing with those settings. 2) The delay is set to zero. Go in to settings
and change it to 3, so you have time to alt-tab to another application to
input your results. For example, I go to Notepad to type in the characters I
think I'm hearing it send. 3) No keyboard access to the Start, stop and
finish buttons. But (4) You can also download the KochRX.ZIP from his site,
which enables you to have better keyboard control. Once I copied that to the
Koch Morse Trainer directory, I could run KochRX instead. KochRX has an edit
box for you to type in the characters you hear and a button to compare with
the code sent. It has buttons to run the G4FON trainer, to stop and start
the CW and to erase the edit box for the next practice session. Note that I
successfully ran both the trainer and the helper KochRX program in Windows 7
64-bit and Windows XP. I have none of the sound card stutter problems he
says many users report, and it works great with JAWS! After just 24 hours,
I'm already copying many characters at 30WPM!!! 

 

--Debee [KF6BKR]