Morse code is suprisingly (to me!) fun. Want to learn?

How to get started

HAVE FUN. If you think Morse is easy to learn, it will be easy. If you decide that it’s hard, it will be hard. I thought I just needed to “grind” through frustration, and it probably set me back half a year or more. Relaxing and having fun was the best change I made!

Listen, don’t look. Morse is a heard language.

Start Morse Machine early, as soon as you know a small handful of characters. Don’t wait until you have learned all the characters.

How to keep going

When you miss a character, practice just mentally dropping it and moving on to the next one, don’t spend effort trying to recall the one you missed. (This will really pay dividends later!)

Are you a fast typist? Are you learning with a keyboard? Early in your learning, some days, for maybe two minutes of daily drill, practice saying the character out loud as you type it. This is so that you don’t wire yourself to know where that sound lives on the keyboard but miss its meaning. The better you type, the more this is likely.

Sometimes, just focus on intently hearing the Morse characters without attempting to decode them. I have found this surprisingly helpful.

Talk about your learning process, including what challenges you encounter, as you do it. No minor challenge is too trivial to bring up, and nothing will be unique to you. Whether you use the #MorseCode tag on the fediverse, Reddit’s r/morsecode, your local club, Long Island CW Club, or CWops Academy, find mentors or learning partners and talk about it.

Want more? I wrote a summary of what I wished I knew getting started after about a year that has lots of tips, tools, and topics.