Zen and the Art of Radiotelegraphy

Learning Morse has been over the years a chore for most radio amateurs. For some it was a means to an end and yet for others it has instilled in them a great passion and there is nothing more infuriating to someone like me who has got close but fallen by the wayside to be preached at by those that love CW.

It is true that since the dropping of the code requirement more people than ever are keen to have a go. The access to the HF bands for many former B class licensees has made them realise just what they were missing. CW gets further and when conditions are bad it still gets through when SSB fails. A good CW operator can even beat digimodes with error correction in poor conditions because the imagination lets a human being fill in the gaps, although if predictive texting type techniques are employed the gap is narrowed.

There is lots of advice on the Internet and in books about learning the code and now thanks to the generosity of Carlo Consoli, IK0YGJ his book 'Zen and the Art of Radiotelegraphy' is available free to down load as a PDF file here http://www.qsl.net/ik0ygj/enu/index.html in both English and Italian.

My thanks to Thomas AB9NZ for bringing it to my attention via his blog 'The Radiotelegrapher' , which is essential reading for all hams not just the bass pounders of you out there despite only having been online 15 days. Thomas says of the book... It's a beautiful piece of work. I especially enjoyed his study of "amateur telegraphy from a linguistic perspective" where he poses the question "CW the Esperanto of the third Millennium?". The book is packed with methods and exercises to help the beginner learn the code. Mr. Consoli then raises the bar and teaches the reader how to shed his limits and become the code.