M O R S E M A N version 2.1 copyright (c) 1989 by Robin A. Gist, NE4L copyright (c) 1989 by Renaissance Development ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This program may be freely copied and distributed as long as no fee in excess of basic expenses is charged. Commercial firms desiring to distribute this product must tell customers that this is a shareware product and that they are only paying for a distribution diskette, not the program. The Renaissance Development Corporation or any of its officials assumes no responsibility for any damage that may occur during use of this software. By using this product, the user implicitly agrees to the terms set forth by the company. IF YOU PLAN ON USING THIS PRODUCT, YOU ARE STRONGLY URGED TO REGISTER WITH THE AUTHOR. THIS ENCOURAGES DEVELOPMENT OF BETTER AND STRONGER SOFTWARE PRODUCTS. IT ALSO ENTITLES YOU TO A FREE REGISTERED UPDATE OF MORSEMAN PLUS, WHEN IT BECOMES AVAILABLE. YOU WILL ALSO RECEIVE A COPY OF VERSION 2.1 WITH THE SHAREWARE SCREENS (AND ANY BUGS THAT MAY HAVE BEEN DISCOVERED) REMOVED. A $15.00 DONATION IS REQUESTED. PLEASE SEND TO: Robin Gist, NE4L P.O. Box 491 Killen, AL 35645 If you are a student, a senior citizen on a fixed income or otherwise cannot afford the registration fee, please feel free to use this program without feeling like you have to register. Just drop me a line and let me know what you think and where you think MORSEMAN could be improved. Otherwise, please help support shareware and keep software prices low. If you have a copy of this and you are not a licensed amateur, and want to learn more about ham radio, please contact the American Radio Relay League and ask for an information packet on amateur radio and the address of a radio club in your area. Their address is: American Radio Relay League 225 Main Street Newington, CT 06111 +++ Use of MORSEMAN MORSEMAN is a tool intended for use by amateurs, aspiring hams or anyone else who wishes to either learn the International Morse Code and\or improve their performance and code speed. MORSEMAN will take you through the procedure of learning the morse code (or CW as called by hams) and help you to increase your speed. You can start with the easiest characters and work through a small group, later going back to the ones that you had trouble with. MORSEMAN is written with repetiveness in mind, as the more often you hear the character and associate it with the sound, the easier it will be to recall it. TIPS FOR LEARNING MORSE CODE 1> Keep your sessions short. Never go more than 30 to 40 minutes in a single session. After that time, your mind tends to wander and you are actually learning very little, if any past this point. Let it rest for a few hours, or the rest of the day and come back to it later. 2> Concentrate! Keep your mind on what you are hearing and what it means. If you feel that you can't give it the proper attention at the time, then by all means give it a break or don't attempt to learn characters then. Wait till you can give your undivided attention. 3> Don't get discouraged! If you feel that you are not learning as fast as you'd like or if you just can't seem to remember a character, don't give up. Every ham who has a license today had to learn the code and they all went through exactly what you are going through now. Just keep on chugging through it. You probably are remembering more than you think. DON'T GIVE UP!! 4> Pace yourself: You don't have to learn it all in one day! Give yourself some time. A lot of people have learned CW in three days and for some it will take a few weeks or even a month or so. Give yourself ample time to learn it. Also set aside some time EVERY DAY to practice code. At the beginning of each session, go over what you have learned up to that point and go to a PRACTICE SESSION in the MORSEMAN program and review. The reinforcement of previous learned characters will dramatically increase the speed of your learning. A special note: If you can schedule your sessions to come right before your normal bedtime, do it. If you can work on the code for 20 or so minutes before you retire, your mind will work on it while you are asleep. This would amount to better retention and an increase in speed occuring a little faster (normally). If you are usually "wore out" at bedtime, don't schedule your normal session at that time. Schedule it earlier in the day and brush over the characters at bed- time. +++ OPERATING THE MORSEMAN PROGRAM The MORSEMAN program is very easy to operate and requires very little computer experience to use. Place the disk in the appropriate drive (after properly booting the machine) and type MORSEMAN. Shortly, you should see the introduction screen. After a few seconds, the main menu window will appear. Just use your arrow keys to move to the mode of operation that you desire and press enter. OPERATING MODES Keyboard Mode In the Keyboard Mode, the program sends Morse code characters for the letter that you hit on the keyboard. You do not have to press for the text to be sent. When you get through, press <=> to exit back to the main menu. Ending signals (AR, BK ect..) may be sent by pressing the following keys: [ BT ] SK ; AR ' KN These keyboard symbols may also be incorporated in text files. Create Text File This mode allows you to create a text file which can be sent at a later time. Just enter lines of text as you would if you were using a text editor or word processor. When you are through, type a CTRL-X on a blank line and press enter. You will then be prompted for a file name. DO NOT ADD AN EXTENSION TO THE FILE NAME, MORSEMAN WILL ADD ".CWT" FOR YOU. TUTOR MODE The Tutor Mode of MORSEMAN is where a newcomer may learn morse code in steps or an experienced amateur may practice his CW in order to upgrade. If you are an experienced amateur who is competent in morse code, then you may skip to the next section on TEACH MODE -- CW PRACTICE. +++ If you enter the Tutor Mode, then you will be prompted with a new menu that will allow you to choose which group of characters you desire. It is STRONGLY recommended that you learn the characters by groups and in their logical order (I.E. Group One, then Group Two). After learning each group, you will be ready to practice the group. If you do not leave the group that you are in, you can learn all of the characters in the group and practice that group. If for some reason you must leave the practice session, you can enter it again at the point you left it by entering the number closest to the point where you had to stop. All practice is via random characters. When you are learning characters (in the "Teach Mode", you will be sent the character you are learning nine times. After the computer is through, press enter and you will be sent the next character nine times. Try to remember these by sound (dits and dahs) and not by sight (dots and dashes). You will then be prompted again and you will be sent 25 random characters, each being one of the two that you just learned. You will do this for each character. (Groups of four or six and subgroups of two). Practice these groups until you are comfortable with them, then proceed. You will most likely never see the same group of characters. This way, you won't be able to memorize that characters in any practice set. After you get through learning a group of characters and practicing it, you will be prompted as to whether you would like to practice all characters up to that point. It is strongly recommended that you do this before you retire from the session and before beginning a new session. Teach Mode --CW Practice On the Teach Mode menu, you may practice all of the characters, numbers and punctuation. Just enter <8> at the prompt. Teach Mode -- Random Code In this mode, MORSEMAN will present you with random letters in groups of five. This will include all punctuation, letters and numbers. Ending signals are not presented. CHANGE PARAMETERS If you are not satisfied with the speed, tone or character spacing of MORSEMAN, select he parameters option at the main menu. You can then select whether to change the tone frequency (in kiloHertz), CW speed (in words per minute) or spacing. Make your changes and press enter. MORSEMAN will then ask you if you want to make the changes permanent. If you answer yes, then the changes will be placed in the configuration file for the program and every time you start the program, these values +++ will be the default values. If you decide not to make the changes permanent, then the values will remain the same through- out the session but will not become the default values. SPECIAL NOTE ABOUT "SPACING" The spacing for MORSEMAN is already set for optimization on a 10 MHz PC XT. If you are running an AT type machine, you may want to change the spacing to compensate for the differences in clock speed. The converse is true for PC's and slower XT's. You may want to slow it down a bit for those machines. Just follow the instructions at the "spacing" option. You will have to exper- iment a bit to get the speed reading to be an accurate reflection of the actual speed. A processor independent algorithm is in development for MORSEMAN where you won't have to do that. Another use for the spacing option is to let you copy characters at the said speed but allow you to lengthen the spacing so you copy characters at 13 wpm, but use 5 wpm spacing. Please note that the numbers used in the spacing option are purely arbitrary and their numeric values do not reflect an exact spacing. SEND FROM TEXT FILE This option will allow you to convert any text file into morse code. When you enter this mode, you will be asked for a filename. If you cannot remember the filename, just press return and a listing of all files with a ".CWT" extension will be listed. Select one from this If you want to send a file created on a text editor, make sure that it is in ASCII format, has the extension ".CWT". CONCLUSION If you are just starting out with morse code, then I wish you the best of luck! Ham radio is a very exciting hobby and today, with the Novice license in hand, you are no longer limited to using just CW. You can also use phone, radioteletype, packet radio and repeaters. Above all, don't let the code stand in the way of getting a license. If you are like me, you will start out disliking the code, because it is then considered an obstacle to a license. Later after you get used to it, you may develop a love affair with CW that lasts a lifetime. Take the advice of a ham who has been there: don't look at the code as an obstacle, look at it as entertainment, a new language or (as I did) something that no one else in my neighborhood knew! 73 and see you on the air! ...Robin, NE4L