1- I wanted to learn so I could get HF priviledges, and then found out that Morse is OK! It's a link to the past of ham radio, plus it will continue to be a valuable mode for many decades to come. No, I don't work in Morse in regular operation, but really, it simply wasn't as hard as I thought it would be and it's pretty neat.

2 - I got ahold of a little DOS program called MORSE.EXE and practiced my butt off (about two weeks, your mileage will certainly vary). It runs very nicely in a DOS emulation program on my iMac; hell, it'll run on just about every computer produced since 1986.

3 - Once I learned the letters and numbers, I learned a few punctuation and prosigns out of the back of the Radio Amateur's Handbook. All you need is the period, comma, slash and question mark, plus BT and SK (. . . _ . _ CHARGE!!!)

4 - I went to the ARRL's website for W1AW's code practice files and got both the 5 wpm and the 7.5 wpm files and nailed those down. I did this mainly because W1AW is about 3,000 miles from Portland, OR, and it's not always convenient for on-the-air copy, although I strongly recommend that for "real world" practice.

5 - Then, I got ahold of a program that would send me a number of simulated QSOs. I can't remember which Mac-specific program I used, but there are a lot of them out there.

6 - I fired up my good ol' Radio Shack DX-440 receiver and tuned into the 40 meter novice code sub-band: 7.100-7.150 MHz. The national novice calling freq is 7.110 MHz. I listened for about a week and copied about 20 live QSOs.

Whole process, start to passing the test? Four weeks flat. You non-dyslexic types will probably do a bit better! :^)

gl es 73 de K7CCC