Morse Key Lab
Two contacts, five designs, and one difference argued over more than any other in CW: iambic A or B.
What comes out of it
The five designs
- Straight key. The human does everything. Dots and dashes last exactly as long as you press. This is how it was done for a hundred years, and it is the only way a fist develops that others recognize you by.
- Bug. Semi-automatic: a vibrating spring makes the dots, the dashes are yours. That is how you recognize a bug on the air - even dots, uneven dashes. Vibroplex built them from 1905, and the sound has its own name: the bug fist.
- Single paddle. Both sides run automatically, but only one at a time. Squeezing does nothing.
- Iambic A. Squeezing both sides alternates dots and dashes. On release, A stops at once.
- Iambic B. Like A, but on release B appends one more element.
The difference between A and B, in one sentence
Squeeze both paddles briefly and let go at the same moment. A sends a dot. B sends a dot and a dash. That is the whole difference, and it is exactly one element wide.
Small, but it has consequences. Someone trained on B sitting at an A station loses the last element of every squeezed character. Going the other way, from A to B, you send one too many - an A becomes an R. That is why every keyer carries this setting, and why experienced operators ask about it before touching somebody else's gear.
Try it above: switch the mode, squeeze both arrow keys briefly, release. The difference shows up in the output immediately.
Weighting and ratio
Two stations can send at the same speed and still sound different. There are two controls for that:
- Weighting shifts tone against pause without changing the speed. At 1.1 the tones are ten per cent longer and the pauses shorter by the same amount - fuller, some say "heavier". The time per character stays the same.
- Dash to dot is normally exactly 3. Set it to 3.5 and you get the long, old-fashioned dashes you hear on early recordings.
The button "Compare with the standard" sends PARIS twice: once with your setting, once by the book. The difference is smaller than you would expect and audible immediately.
What stability measures
The analysis below measures how even your dots are - spread divided by average, independent of speed. An electronic keyer reaches a hundred per cent because it cannot do otherwise. A hand sits below.
That is not a fault. That deviation is your fist, and experienced operators recognize one another by it before the callsign is finished. The figure only becomes interesting compared with yourself: if it climbs over weeks, you are getting cleaner.
Frequently asked questions
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Which type should I learn?
Most people starting today take a paddle with iambic B, because most gear ships that way. If you like the sound of a straight key you lose nothing: the characters are the same, your hand just does more of the work.
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Why the arrow keys and not the space bar?
Because two arrow keys can be held at once. With a single key the difference between iambic A and B could not be demonstrated at all - and that is the point here.
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Is this a simulation or a real keyer?
The timing is real: the same rules a keyer chip follows, and the same base unit of 1200/WPM. What is missing is the mechanism under your fingers - a good paddle feels nothing like a keyboard, and that cannot be rebuilt.
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Why does the analysis reset when I change a setting?
Because a changed setting means changed conditions. Measuring part of a run under the old one and the rest under the new would produce figures that mean nothing. So the measurement starts again.