Michael Coslo wrote:
I felt kinda bad about being mean to Len,

When were you mean to Len, Mike?

Unless you count disagreeing with him and proving him wrong as "being
mean", you've been nothing but nice to him.

so I'll try to meet him
halfway with a Morse code topic.

His definition of meeting halfway is that you agree with him 100%.

So maybe we can ressurect this old one...

I hear lots of Hams declare that Morse code is a binary mode.

It is most certainly not.

Depends how you define "binary".

Let us look at the situation.

Is the Dit a "0"?

No.

Is the Dah a "1"?

No.

Is the space between characters a "0"? and the Dih a "1"? Oh wait,
what
is the Dah then? Oh, and what about the space between words?

Key up is "0". Key down is "1". Also known as "space" and "mark",
respectively.

It isn't binary,

Depends on how you define "binary".

and the way our noodles process it isn't binary.

Different subject.

It's not binary.

Most Morse operators with any skill (that excludes Len) process a
complete character as one "sound". "didahdidit" is recognized as "L",
in the same way that when you hear the word "cat", you think of the
animal. The Morse operator does not think in terms of dits and dahs any
more than a person thinks in terms of the consonant and vowel sounds
(phonemes) making up "cat".

Of course *really* skilled Morse ops hear entire words as units of
sound. And at some level, they begin to think in Morse, just as fluent
speakers of a language think in that language.
Of course Len wouldn't know about that...

73 de Jim, N2EY