Ed Kiser's Morse Code Training Program


Ed Kiser developed this program for Windows computers to learn and practice Morse to use with local scouting organizations. The program is oriented towards learning Morse in a Swallows & Amazons environment:

"It is not oriented at all to short wave radio, but two kids flashing at each other from their bedroom windows at night, which frankly is much more of the 'Ransome' environment, as our Ransome childhood friends did not use short wave, but flashing torches, and waving of a flag, or simply moving a lantern to a visible position, then hiding it. That is the level of my target audience."

It uses QBASIC (which is included - it is freely available elsewhere on the internet). Ed notes that the interesting thing about QBASIC SOURCE is that the user can 'tweak' the code itself if desired, and thus fine tune the timing to be whatever practice level one wants.

"One of the facilities here is to take a TXT file, and then translate it to just DOT/DASH, then one can sit down with a printout of that, and for practice, start writing in the letters for each code. Another form of practice is that it operates the primitive speaker on the PC using the QBASIC BEEP function, so one can listen to the code and write it down as it is heard, then afterwards compare the display that shows the message text with what one wrote down. Or one can type in TEXT, and it will BEEP the code for that text. There is a "AREADME.TXT" that explains these functions. BATCH files are provided to make it easier to try the several tools provided."

Download Ed's morse code package as a ZIP file: MORSE.ZIP.

"Here is an example of the output of SCRIPT.BAT. It is a document written in MORSE, so one would enter the letters over each code to spell out the text. I started the first few lines, just to show the flavor of the effort. Of course, this assumes one knows the code, or there is a lot of looking up to do, as Dick did in his notebook as they began their code drills on the kitchen table at Dixon's during the early part of Winter Holiday. Just a demo of one sort of drill that the package provides."

Download the example at SAM.ZIP

Ed would be delighted to receive any feedback you might have about this program and how you used it. If you send comments to the webmaster of All Things Ransome (see the home page) it will be sure to reach him.

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