Greetings Holger!   
      
    RW>> Today, CW is a lost art, with less and less amateurs able to copy   
    RW>> it.   
      
    HG> I didn't know it before but now I do. I'm an art lover, I love Morse.   
      
   You are a dying breed. I learned morse to get a novice ticket c1970, then   
   had to give up AR for a few years for lack of money, only to have to go   
   through the testing again for another novice ticket, c1977. Got on the air   
   to practice morse in a real environment, meanwhile upgrading to   
   Technician. Worked morse for a while increasing my speed from 5wpm to   
   15wpm, enough to pass the General morse exam and eventually the Advanced.   
   I quit there because I had no interest in continuing with cw and the   
   Extra class wasn't enough to warrant further morse practice.   
      
   My interests lay more in building antennas than being on the cw portions   
   of the HF bands.   
      
    RW>> In fact, learning to copy past the 'wall' at 13wpm wasn't as easy as   
    RW>> it was to learn to recognize words instead of characters.   
      
    HG> There's no trick involved, it comes naturally when you use it.   
      
   That's what I meant. If you use it enough, you will learn to recognize   
   words and not have to listen for each character. This helps to improve   
   your copy speed greatly.   
      
    HG> You start with learning single letters,   
      
   Did that as a boy scout in the 50s. I knew morse code at the age of 13.   
   Teens aren't that interested in morse or radio as much as they are girls   
   at that age.   
      
    HG> then progress to recognise some common "words" like RST, QTH and   
    HG> name. After that phase you begin to "store" the operators name and   
    HG> qth in your head and continue from there to recognize several words   
    HG> at a time and finally you arrive at the stage where you copy first   
    HG> whole sentences and finally entire paragraphs.   
      
   I never got to whole sentences and thus no paragraphs either.   
      
    HG> I admit that I have lost at least the paragraph copying because of   
    HG> not having trained that in a long time but it will come back with   
    HG> training.   
      
   I suspect that my HF rig, Kenwood TS520 bought c1977, has blown some pwr   
   supply caps as it has blown the fuse when turning it on. Someday, I'll get   
   around to fixing that. The only other source of cw that I have is the   
   repeater IDers around here.   
      
      
       Have a day!   
      
            R\%/itt - K5RXT   
      
   --- GoldED+/W32 1.1.5-31012   
   --- D'Bridge 3.99   
    * Origin: HAM Radio, aka Amateur Radio. 804? Over! (1:387/22)