It occurs to me that copying cw in braille is both a good way to practice 
your cw and braille skills.  Try it with a Perkins, and then with a slate 
and stylus.
--
Jim, ke5al
-----Original Message----- 
From: Mike Duke, K5XU
Sent: Sunday, November 15, 2015 5:58 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Copying CW in Braille

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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