Where do new CW ops come from?

For those of you currently teaching classes or mentoring people to learn enough Morse Code to get on the air, what are the statistics on their operating backgrounds?

Are they brand new licensee's (or people studying for a license) who've never operated on the air before? Or do they mostly have previous experience in another mode? If so, UHF/VHF (HTs and repeaters), SSB, RTTY, digital modes, or other?

 

The handful of operators I know in our club who expressed a desire to be taught morse, were all experienced hams with a full licence and therefore had used other modes. Reasons for wanting to know morse were varied. Everything from getting better DX contacts to "A nice idea to know".

 

In the last twenty years, my experience has been that new licensees were the ones learning morse.

 

===========https://cwops.org/cw-academy/

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73 - K1LKP

 

My guess (and yes, it's an opinion) is that many new hams want to be in with the "cool kids" and think saying "I'm trying to learn Morse code" is the ticket in. But others are like I was 30 years ago ... enamored by the simplicity and efficiency of the code. I'm from the era where everyone learned code ... cuz they had to. But many (most) abandoned it before the ticket came in the mail.

 

Old CW ops.

 

"It has to be damp." (Addams Family Values)

 

When you reach the point of hearing loss and tone deafness that you can't understand what's said on the phone bands.
Plus the zero propagation es high noise levels these past 8 yrs then you tend to wanna look into learning Morse.
At least that's my story.

 

ALL of my 6m AM pals had to learn code and they all quickly abandond it with their class upgrade yrs ago...

 

I'm often surprised by the number of new CW ops I find on the bands.
One thing for sure they don't come from Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch.

Yep, I'm back was away camping for a week.