Many thanks to David (K2WNW) and Pete Polanyk, who share this brilliant documentary from the BBC World Service:
Morse code: Ready to transmit
The Documentary Podcast
At the world Morse Code championships in Tunisia, competitors must battle to be the fastest and most accurate at sending and receiving Morse code.
The speed some people can understand Morse is incomprehensible to me! I used to use the Windows program RufzXP when learning CW. This had league tables showing the speed other user were achieving and they were far beyond what I was managing to do. It used characters per minute and there was a challenge to get over 1000 cpm. At speeds like that the sound was just like the example in the podcast – it was just a burp with the individual characters indistinguishable from each other to my ear but some people could understand it.
I stopped using RufzXP when I upgraded to Windows 11 as it wouldn’t run on W11 although it might do now, I haven’t checked.
I use RufzXP with W11 and it does work. That program has definitely helped my ability to copy a callsign.