Mike,
Interesting, I wish I'd had the push or motivation to do as you did.
Thanks
Tom WA6IVG
On Sun, Nov 15, 2015 at 06:58:24AM -0500, Mike Duke, K5XU wrote:
> The summer that I learned CW, I had just finished my first year of
> typing class at my school for the blind. The code records I used had
> the text for each lesson in the back of the instruction manual. I would
> copy the code on my brother's portable typewriter, take the sheet to my
> mother, and she would grade it as tough as any school teacher would
> have done. If I didn't score well above the minimum number of correct
> characters for the lesson, she would insist that I wait a few minutes,
> then run that lesson again. By the end of that summer, I was copying 13
> WPM solid on the typewriter, and listening to QSOs in my head on my
> receiver. I soon noticed that copying in my head was much faster, so I
> would type the CW only long enough to keep my writing speed up for the
> Novice, and later the General tests.
>
> In 1985, 15 years after passing my General at the FCC office in Mobile,
> Alabama, I took my extra during the first volunteer exam session that
> was held in Meridian, Mississippi. The Extra Class code test was still
> 20 WPM, although by then it was a "fill in the blank" type test. I
> could copy a pretty solid 30 WPM in my head, but about a week before
> the test, I began using my Perkins to copy the code practice from W1AW
> in order to practice writing it on paper for the test. The first time I
> did that, I had to back up to the 10 WPM practice run in order to get
> more than a few letters on the paper. It took me 4 or 5 sessions to get
> my speed up to 20 WPM that way. I'm sure I would have experienced a
> decrease in speed if I had used the typewriter rather than the
> Brailler, I suspect that decrease would not have been quite as drastic.
>
> --
> Mike Duke, K5XU
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