Koch method morse code trainer

How the trainer works

1. Start at lesson 1, K and M, or pick the lesson you have reached. Each lesson adds one character, up to all 41 in lesson 40.
2. Press Start a round. You hear 20 characters from the lesson, one at a time; press the key for each as soon as you know it.
3. Get 18 of 20 right and the next lesson opens. Its new character plays three times with its marks drawn before you go again.

Rounds aren't dealt evenly. The newest character comes up twice as often as the others, so you hear it most while it's still new. The trainer also keeps your last 10 answers for each character, and one you miss comes up more often, up to twice as often when you missed every one. A round below 18 never moves you back a lesson; it spends more time on your misses instead.

Finish one round a day, in any of the four modes, and the trainer counts the days in a row and keeps your best. Miss a day and the count starts again at 1. During a round it shows how many you've got right in a row, and your score shows the most in a row.

The trainer saves your lesson, those last answers, your speed and your streak in this browser, so you pick up where you left off. They never leave your device. Start over takes you back to lesson 1 and clears the answers; your streak stays.

To send the characters you've learned, open the practice oscillator: its Send this mode picks from your saved lesson.

Head copy

Head copy means reading morse in your head as you hear it, without writing each letter down. Pick Head copy above the drill and a round plays 10 words, one at a time, with no keys to press. Read each one in your head, then show it with its marks and mark whether you got it. A word you missed plays again with its marks lit.

The words come from Edward Dolch's list of 314 common words, published in 1948 for teaching children to read. A round plays only words spelled with the characters you know, so lessons 1 to 6 play groups of 2 to 4 letters instead. Lesson 7 adds A, and its 8 letters spell 16 words, such as MAKE, ME, RUN.

You mark yourself, so head copy doesn't move you on a lesson: 18 of 20 right on the keys still does. A finished head copy round counts toward your streak.

Callsigns

Every station on the air sends a callsign, and it's the first thing you copy in a contact. Pick Callsigns above the drill and a round plays 20 calls, one at a time: type each one and press Enter. Calls mix letters, figures and the slash, so this mode doesn't follow your lesson. It suits the end of the course.

The speed follows you. A call you copy right on one hearing sends the next one 2WPM faster, and a miss sends it 2 WPM slower, between 10 and 60 WPM, so a round settles where you copy about half. Play a call again and a right answer keeps the speed. RufzXP, a free callsign trainer, paces its calls the same way.

The calls are random, but each is built the way a real one is. The ITU Radio Regulations (No. 19.68) form an amateur callsign from a prefix of one or two characters, one figure, and up to four characters ending in a letter, as in W1AW, the ARRL's own station. Each prefix belongs to one of 41 countries and falls in the series Appendix 42 of the Regulations gives that country: K, N and W for the United States, G and M for the United Kingdom, JA for Japan. About 8% of calls end in /P (portable) or /M (mobile), two of the suffixes the IARU guide lists.

QSO

A QSO is a contact between two radio stations, made of overs: each over is one station's turn to send. Pick QSO above the drill and you answer 5 stations calling CQ. Each sends back its first over, and you copy four things from it while it plays: their call, the signal report, their name and their location, called the QTH.

Each over follows the IARU guide's typical CW QSO for the beginner. It opens with your call, DE (from) and theirs, then a greeting and thanks for the call. The report, the name and the QTH each come twice, then HW CPY? asks how you copy, and the calls come again with K, over to you, or KN, over to you only. Check your copy to see which of the four you got, then the over as sent with every abbreviation spelled out, like this one:

RST stands for readability, from 1 to 5, signal strength, from 1 to 9, and tone, from 1 to 9, so 599 is the best report there is. At 20 WPM an over like this one takes about 64 seconds, and it mixes letters, figures and abbreviations, so this mode suits the end of the course too. See the Q codes hams use most for QTH and the others you'll hear.

Which speed to pick

Pick the speed you want to end up at, not the one that feels easy today. At slow speeds learners count the dits and dahs of each character, and Jon Bloom of the ARRL Laboratory put the often-mentioned 13 words per minute (WPM) barrier down to the switch from counting to hearing the rhythm. Koch's full speed skips that switch. The trainer starts at 20 WPM, and the speed buttons go from 10 to 25.

To give yourself more time between characters, rather than slower characters, the morse code translator adds Farnsworth spacing to any text you type.

More morse tools

• How to learn morse code

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• Morse code alphabet

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• Morse code translator

  Type any text to hear it in morse, with wider spacing if you want it.