What is new in Version 8??

First, the settings of the selected characters is no longer changed when you select different Speed or Effective Speed settings.

You can now save the lesson text by right-clicking on the text window and selecting "Save To File".

There is a new feature, suggested by Alan Matthews, where by the most recently added characters can be sent more frequently. This option is activated by the "Favour Recent Additions" checkbox on the Setup screen.

But perhaps the biggest addition is the generation of MP3 files without the need to go through the intermediate step of creating a .WAV file. Unfortunately, due to Patent restrictions and Royalty issues, this is not quite as simple as I would like it to be. To use the MP3 recrding capability, you must purchase an MP3 encoding application and make it available to my software to create MP3 files. To get more details of what is needed, click on the "MP3 Recording" button on the About Window. After a recording has been created the software also writes the details to a text file with the same name as the recorded file. This can be used to keep track of the contents of the file.
 
I am now using a new freeware Installer. The advantage is that it is a 32 bit application, so the AUTOEXEC.NT error has now gone, but the disadvantage is a nag screen at the end of the install. However this might be an advantage as that is how I found the software!


What is new in Version 7?

Well, first I have had a lot of complaints about disabling the X in the top righthand corner of the application. I now only disable this close button when the Morse generator is active. At other times you can use it to close the application.

I have also had comments about not being able to resize the main Window. I have now changed that so that resizing the window will change the size of the display area for the sent Morse.

I have also added an option in the Setup window to use the same learning sequence as the MFJ 418 Morse tutor. This means that you can use both methods to learn Morse and remain in sync.

The three main additions to the software are Speed Dither and Pitch Dither and Variable Weight. Using the software to become proficient at 'head reading', I set the speed to 30 WPM and recorded a total of 6 hours of Morse which I play back on my portable MP3 player for practice.

After lots of practice, I have become pretty proficent at 'head reading' at 30 WPM. You can imagine my surprise when I found that I was not nearly as accurate at 25 WPM. From this I deduced that the brain recognises Morse characters reflexively provided that they are sent at a speeds it has had practice at. As a result I have created 'Speed Dither' which varies the speed of the characters by up to 5 WPM below your chosen speed.

At the same time, I decided to add Pitch Dither which varies the pitch by +/- 25 Hz when selected.

Dithering takes place on a character by character basis when you are using random Morse sequences and word by word in other learning modes.

Variable Weighting varies the Mark-Space ratio of the Dots and Dashes. These are varied totally randomly!

Lastly, I have adopted a user suggestion for an audio file naming convention for the files generated by the software, which is:

KochMorse_aa_bb_cc.wav,

where aa is the number of characters, bb is the code speed and cc is the effective code speed. You can override this selection by entering your own file name.

Like a number of versions before it, this version of the Koch Software includes a mechanism to send text files in Morse code.

Because I am concerned that this facility is not in keeping with the Koch philosophy on learning Morse code, I have only enabled the button once all 40 characters have been learnt. 

Click on the button and a dialogue box will appear allowing you to select a text file (.TXT), Alternately you can drag and drop a text file onto the application.

The text file can contain any of the Koch characters, and can send prosigns such as BK by pre-pending a ^, for example ^bk.

Two QSO Files are included in this distribution with thanks to Les, GM0SOZ for permission to use the files.

In the playback window, the prosigns will be displayed in upper case, with all other characters in lower case.

Enjoy the software and if you have any suggestions, drop me an email at ray@qrpham.fsnet.co.uk.


73 

Ray, g4fon