Morse code, had a learning curved that was steep, then leveled off. Soon you started recognizing sounds as words rather than individual sounds translated to letters formed into words.You start writeing down what you have heard and you recognized what is being sent. You then fill in the letters before they are sent and figuring what letters will be sent, its easy to jump your receive speed. Soon you will start sending and receiving with an iambic keyer, paddles, in a car. You are mentally hearing sounds, and forming words in your head, and hearing a conversation. When you are sending in a car, you turn left or right and you weight shifts and you get a group of dits or dahs depending on you weight shift. Most fun I ever had was when I was operating a state qso party mobile, and giving new counties to those who collected counties. Logging, I used a digital recorder as driving and writing was alittle hard. Code operators come in all types. Best two I ever saw was one, a navy operator that ran a listen post in Cryprus. He couldn't send with a key but on a keyboard. hje was something else. In a contest he would keep two loggers busy. He had one eye phone on, and he used his other ear to talk with the loggers, telling them who it was and other stuff. Th other was a lady, that during ww2, was in the German Navy, the Kriegs Marine, and she was a cw operator for ships, in Denmark. Both professionally trained and left the rest of us mere mortals in the dust. BaRRY, cw is a skill and and art form. The dropping of the code requirement was sort of like the Navy leaving wooden ships and going to iron ships, or the Army going from Horse Calvary to air mobile. If you do master code, you are accepted differently amoung your piers. Good luck
