W in Morse code

W starts with one short tone and then holds two long ones. Counting the gaps it is nine units, so at the site's 18 WPM it lasts 600 milliseconds, the same as V.

Say the WHITE WHALE or the WORLD WAR, with the light "the" as the dot and the two stressed words as the dashes. Both come from the long list of memory phrases for every letter.

On a key or a flashlight, make the first tone short and the next two three times as long, with one-unit gaps between them. Written, W is a period and two hyphens.

W grows out of A: .- with one more dash is W. Add a third dash and you have J, .---; add a dot instead and it is P, .--., so wait for the letter gap after the second dash.

Reverse W and you get G, --., two dashes and then the dot. Swap every element and it is D, -.., the same shape with the lengths flipped.

The sound-alike drill has a set for W, J, P and 1, the characters that open with a dot and then run into dashes. To see where W sits among the rest, open the full alphabet chart.

Call signs that begin with K, N or W, along with the block AAA to ALZ, are reserved for the United States. US amateur stations can be issued calls starting with A, K, N or W, so a call that opens with .-- tells you the station is American before the rest arrives.

For broadcast stations the first letter carries geography: W is generally used east of the Mississippi River and K west of it. Time signal stations hold W calls too, among them WWV in Fort Collins, Colorado, sent in Morse as .-- .-- ...- with two Ws in a row.

W also leads WX, the ITU-R M.1172 abbreviation for weather, so .-- -..- in a contact means a weather report follows. The Callsign sprint is a quick way to practice copying call signs by ear.