I self-taught myself Morse years ago and could read up to about the 12 wpm, but I must confess I'm kind of rusty now. Still, probably just a little practice would works wonders.
The code is still a way to get a message across under conditions which make all other modes unreadable.
I admire the guys who can read it at blazingly fast speeds -- I'm sure some of them must be almost able to decode 50-baud RTTY in their heads!
