Morse Code

I touched on the topic of Morse Code in the last post. I learnt AMA in under a day and Cykey coding in less than an hour. Could I memorize Morse? Here is how I approached the task.

Firstly, learn the letters as sounds. Use your phonetic alphabet and say the Morse after the letter. “Whiskey: dot, dash, dash” or “Quebec: dah, dah, dit, dah”.

Most of you will already know one bit of Morse. SOS is three dots, three dashes and three dots.

Learn the vowels first. Alpha is a simple dot-dash. Echo is the most used letter in English so is a single dot. India is two dots, like a pair of eyes. Oscar you already know from SOS. It is three dashes. Uniform is two dots and a dash.

Each of these vowels have a Morse character that is either their reverse or their inverse.

Alpha written backward is November, dash-dot. A and N form the word “An”. You cannot write Echo backwards but you can swap the dot for a dash. A single dash is Tango. E and T go together as in “ET phone home”. The inverse of India is Mike, two dashes. I and M form the abreviations “I’m” or “’im”. The inverse of Oscar is three dots, which is Sierra which you already know from SOS. Uniform backwards gives us Delta dash-dot-dot. D and U form “du”, a phonetic rendering of “do”. Or you could think of depleted uranium.

To the above we will slip in another letter you may already know. “V for Victory”, three dots and a dash you may have seen in old war films. The reverse of this is the Morse code for Bravo. B and V sound similar.

You have just learnt twelve letters in Morse code! That is nearly half the alphabet and includes some of the most commonly used letters. You can create many messages with just these.

Next, learn some simple words that use other characters. I learnt my name which gave me the codes for Papa, Hotel and Lima. The code for Lima reversed gives me that for Foxtrot. I associate this pairing by thinking Lima sounds like an animal and Foxtrot that it sounds like something to do with animals.

There are various ways to learn the other characters. Charlie is memorable because it seems odd it is so long. Dash-dot-dash-dot. Quebec, dash-dash-dot-dash also sticks in my mind. The reverse of Quebec is the code for Yankee. Associate this pairing by thinking both “Q” and “Why” can be questions.

The chart below is a visual representation of Morse code. You will see a number of different versions of this. I like this one since it reproduces the codes in a linear fashion beneath each character, avoiding misreading the graphic. This chart will help you remember some characters. Kilo is dash-dot-dash. “K” and “R” look similar and Romeo is the inverse of Kilo, dot-dash-dot.

Another chart, sometimes called a Morse Tree or dichotonic key. You will encounter different versions of these and some put “dash/ dah” on the other side, so look carefully. This key is mainly of use in translating from Morse. It helps me remember that Juliet is one dash more than Whiskey. The reverse of Whiskey is Golf. Golf and Whiskey are associated, or you can think of G and W paired as in “Gross Weight” or “Games Workshop”.

Some letters I remember by breaking them up into smaller letters. X-ray is dash-dot-dot-dash so I remember it as “NA”. Zulu is dash-dash-dot-dot so “MI”.

Memorizing the Morse code is not the same as being proficient or fluent in it, of course. An emergency situation is not a time for tests of memory if you can help it. Therefore I suggest you include backups.

I have a small wallet that holds credit cards, membership cards and the like. For years it has carried a laminated card I made with Morse code on. Many of you will recognize the book I photocopied the original from (Note misprint of numbers! All numbers have five elements). It is folded just above “Sending Signals” so that the alphabet is on one side of the card and the signals on the other.

For larger kits I suggest you consider a suitably sized rendition of the chart below. I have modified this so that the linear form of the codes is below each character.

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Binary Tap Code

In the movie “Ship Ahoy” Eleanor Powell’s character tap dances as message in Morse code. In real life, Vietnam POW Jeremiah Denton informed the world that prisoners were being tortured by blinking out the word “TORTURE” in Morse code.

I cannot be denied that Morse code is useful. It is not the easiest system to master, however. Another code used by POWs was the tap code, sometimes known as the 5 by 5 tap code. This code relies on creating or visualizing a 5 x 5 table of letters. C and K are treated as the same letter. The position of the desired letter in the matrix is identified by two sequences of between one and five knocks. For the first set of knocks you count down the rows of the matrix. For the second set you count across the columns. Three knocks in the first sequence would have you count down to “L”. Four following knocks would have you count across and end on “O”. 3-4 is therefore “O”. A disadvantage of this code is that more than half the alphabet requires six or more knocks. Common letters such as U and Y need nine!

An idea that occurs to me is to combine some elements of Morse and the tap code. To do this the references for the letters are converted into binary, using “dits” for zeros and “dahs” for ones. A number value up to seven can be represented by a three-figure binary number. The location of any letter on the tap code matrix can therefor be represented by six figures or six taps. That all letters are the same length may be useful for some applications such as binary one-use pads. Since “O” is 3-4 it can be represented as 011-100 or dit-dash-dash-dash-dit-dit. A dash means to move down a row or across a column, a dit to stay. The binary system also allows us to distinguish “K”. Logically this is to the right of “J” so 010-110. The binary referenced table potentially has 49 character positions, 64 if the zero rows and columns are included. Numerals zero to five would be 000-000 to 000-101. Six to nine would be 001-000, 010-000, 011-000 to 100-000. This is similar to the hand signals for numerals six to nine.

SOS would be 100-011, 011-100, 100-011, so the Morse code ...---... is easier to retain. In binary tap code this effectively 3-7-3. None of the standard letters use 7 so seven on its own could be used as a distress or “!”.



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Universal Lever Lock Pick.

Most of my lock picking has been geared towards cylinder pin locks. The same skills can also be applied to wafer locks. There are, of course, many other types of lock mechanism. Warded locks were discussed in a previous post.

A lock mechanism I often see on the television is that of lever lock or some other design that uses this form of key:

Sometimes this is because the program is set in the past, or set in an old location. Often the lock is for a jail cell in some “developing” nation. My beloved Bogotas are of very little use against such a lock! Naturally I am curious as to how such locks can be dealt with.

The other day I encountered Houdini’s book “Handcuff Secrets”. Despite the title, he covers many other topics and it is an interesting read. One particular item he shows (p.71) is the ingenious device shown below, constructed from two pieces of steel and some brass tube.

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More on Finger Spelling

The recent posts on American Manual Alphabet made me recall something many decades past. A summer long past at primary school when I had become interested in codes and cyphers. One of the books in my possession back then was “The KnowHow Book of Spycraft”. Recently I have been reading the “The Official CIA manual on Trickery and Deception” and realize many of the ideas in the children’s book are more practical than you might expect. Supposedly Soviet spy Oleg Gordievsky, testified that th KnowHow book gave away the KGB’s tradecraft.

When I look at the tracks of a bicycle in the snow and estimate its speed, it is something I learnt from the KnowHow Book of Spycraft. Even today this book and the related “Usborne Spy’s Guidebook” are well worth a flick through, especially if you want to inspire a youngster to noticing more than their phone.

The reason I recalled this book is that it contained the following page:

The system is less like British Finger Spelling than I had thought. Some of the single-handed signals have potential as useful supplements to the AMA symbols we have already learnt. For example, “Echo”, “Foxtrot”, “Mike”, “November” and possibly “Uniform” will all be clearer over a greater distance than standard AMA signs. “Juliet” can be made with less hand movement, although I would suggest this is always made with the four fingers raised to distinguish it from the standard “Lema” gesture.

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