No, the KN is normally sent "open" but most people tend to shorten the gap between the letters. I subconsciously take my fingers off the paddle for a fraction of a second between the K and the N. Don't worry though - any of those three options will sound fine. You'll soon pick up the way you want it to sound:) Good luck! Matt M0PTO

As Matt says in his comment. BK can grammatically be sent as a true Prosign, but is more commonly sent open, like KN. Check out the video on Prosigns for more on BK and others. Best, Chris KF7WX

@@tincanblower Thanks for the heads up 73

@@cdherter1 Thanks Chris. I’m loving the resurgence of interest in CW. 73

Play the video at 75% speed and listen with your eyes closed. I tend to see the letters coming up like a "ticker tape" in my mind's eye, but I'm sure there are other ways of head copying. Listen to text that you're fairly familiar with and don't be afraid to listen a few times. Repetition is the key to fluency. You'll start to learn the sounds of groups of letters and words and not just the individual letters. If you listen to lots of plain text morse, you'll find the letters "T H E" jump out like a single sound, in the same way CQ might do for you already. Look me to on QRZ as I might be doing a V2 of my online course, focusing on head copy. Good luck! Matt M0PTO

Hi David. How about joining one of our zoom classes? We're starting one up next week. Email me if you're interested or have questions. Also happy to chat real time. One of the other students is also a ZL. cdherter@gmail.com. Best, Chris. KF7WX

We call that "Farnsworth" technique, whereby the individual character speed is sent at 20-=25 WPM, but the spacing is adjusted to a slower speed. That fast character speed helps your brain begin to recognize each character as a single sound, rather than a collection of dots and dashes. It's called instant character recognition, and is what will get your code speed up to 20 WPM! If you're interested in learning about that, check out: www.cwops.org. Best, Chris. KF7WX