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Morse Academy 5.2r for Windows
Morse Academy teaches and drills Morse code: a learning sequence, first practice, a receiving game, endurance trials, proficiency sessions, a keyboard session, a weighting selection and a generator of practice examinations in the style of the former FCC code tests.
Download MorseAcademy-Setup.exe
7.8 MB · Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit) · installs to C:\MA by default · nothing else to install
How to download and install — a picture-by-picture guide (PDF, 1 MB)
Morse Academy is a DOS program, written in 1997, and it operates well under
DOSBox, the free DOS emulator for today's computers.
The installer includes DOSBox, so once installed you simply start Morse Academy from the Desktop
or the Start menu. Press X in its main menu to close the program. Help is on
F1 on every screen, and the 40-page manual is installed with the program.
Because the program is not digitally signed, your browser may ask you to confirm the download, and Windows shows a "Windows protected your PC" message when you run the installer: click More info, then Run anyway. The guide above shows every step.
Why it is here
Morse Academy is made available again mainly for nostalgic reasons. Many amateurs used the program to learn the Morse code successfully in the 1990s, when a code test was still part of the licence examination. Today there are many ways to learn the code on the Internet, with newer ideas that make them a successful way to go. Morse Academy is offered as it was in 1997, for those who learned with it, and for anyone curious about how it was done then.
A little history
Morse Academy was developed from the ideas of AEA's Morse University, a hardware code trainer of the 1980s, and was written by Joe Speroni, AH0A, in the early 1990s. The last version, 5.2r, is dated December 1, 1997. It was freeware: the manual gave blanket permission to copy and distribute it, and radio clubs did so. In Japan it was distributed by the Koganei Amateur Radio Club, where the author operated as 7J1AAA.
The program was also distributed to Volunteer Examiner teams and used to conduct the Morse code examinations at ARRL VEC test sessions. Its Generate examinations session produced a complete code test for Element 1A, 1B or 1C at 5, 13 or 20 words per minute: the test text in the form of a QSO, sent through the PC's sound system or recorded to tape, a 10-question quiz with the passing rule (7 or more correct, or one minute of solid copy), and a printed answer key headed "ARRL VEC confidential document – keep in secure place when not in use", with notes to the VE team. Copies issued to VE teams carried an ARRL VE mark in the distributor line, which switched the session from practice tests to examination packages. The FCC dropped the Morse code requirement in February 2007, and the examination feature became a piece of history – it still produces practice tests today.
A copy of version 5.2r, with its manual, is also preserved in the Internet Archive's MS-DOS software library.
About DOSBox
This package contains DOSBox Staging 0.83.0, unmodified, from the
DOSBox Staging project. DOSBox Staging is free software
under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or later; its source code is available at
github.com/dosbox-staging/dosbox-staging.
The license texts are installed in the dosbox folder.
Contact
Joe Speroni, AH0A / 7J1AAA — [email protected]
To report a problem or suggest a change, please say which version of Windows you use and what you saw on the screen.