Is Morse Code Still Used? Yes, and Here's Where

Each use below is backed by the body that runs it, not by forum posts.

Hear what each one sounds like at 20 words per minute:

• CQ (calling any station)

  -.-. --.-27 units · 1.62 s

• 73 (best regards)

  --... ...--29 units · 1.74 s

• T-E-S-T (beacon under maintenance)

  - . ... -21 units · 1.26 s

• SOS

  ... --- ...27 units · 1.62 s

CQ and SOS each last 1.62 seconds at that speed, and 73 lasts 1.74. Type any of them into the Morse code translator to hear them slower or to flash them as light.

Radio amateurs ("hams") are the first users the ITU names. Its standard for the code, Recommendation M.1677-1, says Morse "continues to be used in some radiocommunication services including the amateur and amateur-satellite services".

The higher US licences no longer require it. The FCC removed the 5 WPM Morse test from the US General and Amateur Extra licences, effective 23 February 2007. The hams who send Morse today do it because they want to.

You can hear them without a licence. ARRL's station W1AW transmits on a published weekday schedule:

• Slow code practice at 5, 7½, 10, 13 and 15 WPM.
• Fast code practice at 35, 30, 25, 20, 15, 13 and 10 WPM.
• Code bulletins at 18 WPM.

It sends on nine frequencies from 1.8025 to 147.555 MHz, and ARRL posts the practice sessions as MP3 files too. A typical contact opens with CQ and closes with 73; the QSO simulator walks you through one.

Try a real test: play one of ARRL's slow-code MP3s near your phone with the microphone decoder open. It finds the tone, writes the letters as they arrive and shows its estimate of the sending speed. Or open the file in the audio file decoder, which reads it in your browser.

The FAA's Aeronautical Information Manual covers two kinds of beacon:

• NDBs (nondirectional radio beacons): all except compass locators "transmit a continuous three-letter identification in code except during voice transmissions" (AIM 1-1-2).
• VORs (VHF omnidirectional ranges): "The only positive method of identifying a VOR is by its Morse Code identification or by the recorded automatic voice identification" (AIM 1-1-3).

The code also warns pilots. During maintenance, a VOR may send T-E-S-T (- . ... -) or stop sending its identifier, and the manual says removing the identifier means the facility is officially off the air (AIM 1-1-11). Some equipment decodes the identifier and shows it to the pilot; other equipment shows the expected identifier, and the pilot checks it against the Morse tones.

• T-E-S-T

  - . ... -21 units · 1.26 s

If you have a recording of a beacon's ident, the audio file decoder will read it.

Yes: the US Navy still trains sailors to intercept it. In January 2016 the US Navy finished the first class of its revised Basic Manual Morse Trainer course at Corry Station in Pensacola, Florida. Sailors learn to intercept Morse communications and to copy and send Morse code, and the course takes about 40 cryptologic technicians a year. Graduates earn the Navy qualification for Morse code intercept operator.

"Morse code continues to be an inexpensive and efficient means of communication for many states throughout the globe," said Senior Chief Tony Gonzales of the Navy's Center for Information Dominance.

Military Morse code covers the services, the training and the history in full.

Morse needs only two inputs, which makes it a way to type for people who cannot use a normal keyboard. In July 2018 Google brought Morse code input to Gboard for iOS and improved it on Android, working with developer Tania Finlayson. Finlayson was born with cerebral palsy and, as a child, used a Morse code communicator with two buttons, a dot and a dash, to spell out words. Gboard for Android can also connect external switches for people with limited mobility.

To try two-button typing in your browser, use the Morse keyboard: key dots and dashes and watch each letter appear.

SOS needs no radio. Its pattern means the same by lamp, by buzzer or on a screen. The flashlight signaller opens with SOS ready to send by phone torch, full screen or the lamp on the page. It sends SOS as one unbroken signal of nine elements, 23 units long, which takes 1.38 seconds at 20 WPM:

• SOS as one signal

  ...---...23 units · 1.38 s

Fast flashing can be unsafe for people with photosensitive conditions, so the screen and the on-page lamp never flash faster than 7 WPM. At that speed the quickest run of dots flashes about 2.9 times a second, under the WCAG limit of three flashes a second. The phone torch runs at whatever speed you set. The SOS in Morse code page has the full story of the signal.

At sea. For most of the 20th century ships kept a radio watch for Morse distress calls, but that needed skilled radio operators listening for hours, and Morse carried little traffic over a limited range. The Global Maritime Distress and Safety System (GMDSS) replaced it with satellite and land-based radio, and moved distress calls from ship-to-ship to ship-to-shore, straight to rescue centres. Ships covered by the SOLAS convention had to fit all GMDSS equipment by 1 February 1999.

What replaced Morse at sea is largely automatic: GMDSS alerts rescuers and gives the ship's position even when no one has time to send an SOS. Beyond shipping, the ITU's standard describes Morse in the mobile and fixed services as used "to a diminishing extent".

No one knows. None of the authorities cited on this page publishes a count of Morse operators, and the figures that circulate online, such as "more than 3 million operators" or "150,000+ active CW operators", come without a source.

What can be measured is smaller and certain: ARRL broadcasts Morse practice from W1AW every weekday at up to 35 WPM, and the US Navy trains about 40 intercept operators a year.

Yes. Anyone may tap it, flash it, play it or write it down. The only rules are radio rules: transmitting on the amateur bands in the US takes an FCC amateur licence, and since 23 February 2007 the General and Amateur Extra licences need no Morse test to get one.

Hear any of these signals in the translator below, or open the full Morse code translator to slow them down or flash them. To read Morse from a radio or a recording, use the microphone decoder, and if you now want to learn it, the Koch course teaches it by ear from the first lesson. For a plain introduction to the code itself, start with what is Morse code.