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> more general purpose

Just how general purpose is it these days? I learned it for amateur radio (a couple years ago), which is probably the only “common” place to use Morse. And even there it’s all but dead



Continuous Wave / Morse is definitely not "all but dead". In fact, it's in literally continuous use, 24/7, worldwide. If you turn on an HF radio (and have an antenna up) and tune to an open band, you will hear morse code.

Go here and see a live map of CW contacts picked up by the Reverse Beacon Network in the past 10 minutes (only the most recent 100, which is the most I could get it to show at once): https://www.reversebeacon.net/main.php?zoom=44.44,6.37,2.40&...


It's getting more and more popular within amateur radio. If I look on the Parks On The Air spots page, there are currently 20 people in a park across the US doing Morse, and I know that when I go to a park I can knock out 60 Morse contacts in about an hour on one band since there are so many hunters.

Clubs like Long Island CW have thousands of members and run classes all day to teach people Morse and help with their operating skills. Just this morning I joined the weekly CWOps mini contest which is so popular they have it in 4 x 1 hour sessions. And that's on top of the 3 medium speed sessions on Mondays, and 2 slow speed ones.

There might not be as much ragchew activity but between contests, DXers, and POTA, there's CW activity all over the bands.


There was a downswing awhile ago because the macro users switched to using digital modes. People who want to make handmade CW contacts are still having fun and that is attracting some people to the space.

Also, knowing Morse has been my escape room superpower. Escape room designers love Morse.


Well put. It is fun.


all (RF) navigational aids in aviation have a more code associated. It's actually required to identify them (by listening to the morse code/looking at the decoded morse code in your panel) to be able to use them for instrument navigation. So that means a big part of all GA flights and pretty much any commercial flight at any point in time in the world are using morse code.




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