DJ5CW's Ham Radio Stuff

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All kinds of things too precious not to share, in short articles. Constantly under construction or destruction. Note that code snippets are usually working minimum examples (often stripped of extra features). If you plan to use and of the code for anything serious, you may want to contact me. It's likely that I can provide you with some updates and good (?) advice. fabian@fkurz.net

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Mind the gap! — Why Spaces are important in Morse Code

Sooner or later, every Morse operator will have the pleasure of meeting a fellow telegrapher who sends very economic code: Without spaces.

This is not only annoying, it can lead to severe misunderstandings. Don't believe me? Let's have a close look at it!

A small Perl script was written to find out "dupes" among the most common words of the English and German language, when sent without spaces. There are more of them that you'd think!

Here's the Perl script: mindthegap (3 kb)

Some of the shocking results:

German
dienst = bereit, ferne = elend, frust = erlebt, funk = element, kenia = cdu, match = goethe, minister = greifen, patient = panik, planen = anlegen, proteste = probem, rtl = ard, total = mord, venedig = einnahme, virus = stille, zahlen = geliebte
English
entire = all, midwest = greatest, pension = prison, threat = defeat, thursday = birthday, widow = pretty, women = joke

Full lists: German - English

Update (2013-08-18): In the eham.net CW forum, WA2ONH posted a link to CQ CQ – Mixed up Morse Code by Nick Berry of DataGenetics, who did some research on this topic before.

See also:


Added: 22-Oct-2012. Last modified: 18-Aug-2013.

Fabian Kurz → Ham Radio → Stuff