I too learned Morse code from a chart (dots and dashes) in the Boy Scout
Manual at age 11 or so in about 1955. I had no trouble at age 14 learning
it by ear at up to 30 wpm within a couple of years of on-air operating
(especially CW traffic nets).
In those days we didn't have audio code apps or code-sending machines
(unless you had an Elmer who lent you an Instructograph). We fellow boy
scouts must have somehow learned to rehearse and practice mouthing the code
to each other using the standard "didahdit" protocol. I'm pretty sure
that's what I was doing vocally to memorize the chart, which took me less
than two days. The chart is the perfect shorthand for prompting the pattern
for each character. I wouldn't want to be reading "A - didah, B -
dahdididit, C - dahdidahdit, ...", etc. Give me the dots and dashes in a
nice chart! If it takes you a month to learn the entire alphabet any other
way, you're doing it wrong.
It certainly does help to have one or more "code buddies" with whom you can
practice mouthing the code at random times during each day when you're
dining or walking or riding together. Maybe many adults don't have that
luxury.
It's important to mouth the code with the proper 1:3 ratio of dits to dahs,
which means you leave off the 't' at the end of any but the last dit in a
character. So when you say the letter F as "dididahdit", the correct timing
is almost automatic. So you're learning the actual sound pattern for each
letter that you have already memorized from the chart. It worked for me!
Rick N6IET
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