Eric, I bet you could do the trick of knowing where your frequency is pretty
close just like the rest of us used to do.  such as, marking dials in
Braille or using crystal calibrators  or as I did one time, I built a
frequency divider which give me a mark or carrier every five KHZ.  It was
not as good as today's gear like you say but neither was the folks who could
see the dials because they was not that accrete either.  Personally I love
CW, I only get on fone about one time a year but that is my preference.
Things have changed a lot but the old days were a lot of fun.  Ed K7UC