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