CW Speed Calculator

It comes from the PARIS standard used to define Morse code speed: the word "PARIS," including the dots, dashes, inter-element and inter-character gaps, and the word space that follows it, totals exactly 50 dot-length time units. One minute is 60,000 milliseconds, so Words per Minute equals 60,000 divided by (50 times the dot duration in milliseconds), which simplifies to 1200 divided by the dot duration -- the formula this calculator uses directly.

Farnsworth spacing keeps each character's dots and dashes at a comfortably fast, realistic-sounding speed while stretching only the silence between characters and words, so a beginner learns to recognize characters by their true rhythm instead of a slowed-down version that doesn't sound like real on-air code. Set Farnsworth Speed below your Dot Duration's implied character speed to activate the stretch; leaving it at 0 uses standard timing where every gap scales with Dot Duration alone.

No -- Farnsworth spacing only stretches the inter-character and inter-word gaps; Dash Duration and the inter-element gap are both fixed multiples of Dot Duration regardless of the Farnsworth Speed setting. This is the entire point of the technique: the characters themselves keep their true, fast rhythm while only the breathing room between them grows.

Words per Minute is inversely proportional to Dot Duration (WPM = 1200 / dot duration in ms), so a shorter dot means more dots fit into the same minute, raising the words-per-minute figure. A 60ms dot works out to 20 WPM, while a 120ms dot -- twice as long -- works out to only 10 WPM, half the speed.

It estimates how long it takes to send a standard calling sequence ("CQ CQ CQ DE [callsign] [callsign] K") at your chosen Dot Duration, which is handy for estimating on-air time budgets during a contest or net, or for gauging how a speed change will affect how quickly you can call and hand off to another station.