Å in Morse code

No. ITU-R M.1677-1 defines the 26 letters A to Z and only one accented letter, É. Å comes from the national tables of Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Finnish, so operators who share one of those languages know it and others may not.

With a station you don’t know, send AA instead. Between two operators who both use Å, the extension keeps the spelling exact.

Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Finnish operators send Å with this signal. Norway made Å official in 1917 and Denmark in 1948, replacing the older spelling AA, which is still the plain stand-in.

French tables give the same signal to À, and Hungarian tables to Á.

National tables reuse spare signals, so .--.- is also À (French). Each table was made for one language, so the letters never clash at home: read the signal in the language of the message.

Decoders have to pick one letter. The Morse code to English decoder on this site reads the signal as Å, whichever letter was meant.

Send AA, .- .-, with a normal letter gap. Every operator can copy it. It takes 13 units, 867 ms at 18 WPM, 2 units shorter than Å.

Danish and Norwegian writing falls back to AA the same way. Swedish usually just drops the ring, and Finnish avoids AA, where it spells a long A.

• Hear it:

  at 18 WPM one unit lasts 66.7 ms, so Å takes 1,000 ms (15 units). Press Play above, slow it to 5 WPM to pick out each element, or turn on Repeat.

• Tap it:

  a short tap for each dot and a press three times as long for each dash, with a dot’s pause between them: short, long, long, short, long.

• Flash it:

  light on for each element, off between them, no faster than 7 WPM. There a unit is 171 ms and Å takes 2.6 seconds; the Flashlight signaler keeps that pace.

• Write it:

  .--.- as one group, with a space on each side so it does not run into the next letter.

• Run A and K together with no gap, .- then -.-, and you have Å.
• It is P with one more dash on the end.
• Learn the sound, not the picture: say di-dah-dah-di-dah until you hear it as one shape.

• ÅNGSTRÖM is .--.- -. --. ... - .-. ---. --, eight letters and 85 units long (5.7 seconds at 18 WPM).
• ÅLAND is .--.- .-.. .- -. -.., five letters and 53 units long (3.5 seconds at 18 WPM).

To hear a whole word or sentence, type it into the Morse code translator. The standard letters are all on the alphabet chart, and the other national letters are with the rest of the accented letters.