so ive been at this morse code thing for about a year now and when i first started i made really good progress, went from basically zero to around 10-11wpm in maybe 3 months which felt great. but then somewhere around 12-13wpm i just hit this wall and i cannot seem to break through it no matter what i do.

my goal is 20wpm, i know thats where a lot of the real CW action is on HF and i want to be able to ragchew without people having to slow down for me constantly. right now i practice with the G4FON trainer for maybe 20 minutes every morning before work, doing Koch method still, and i feel like im just running in place. i can copy most characters fine at 13 but when i try to bump it up to 14 or 15 everything just falls apart and i panic and lose my place.

anyone else been through this? is this just a thing that happens and you push through it, or is there something specific i should be changing about how i practice? im starting to wonder if my method is wrong or if i just need to be patient. my sending is actually pretty decent i think but receiving is where i struggle.

yeah this is completely normal, almost everyone hits a plateau somewhere in the 12-15wpm range. what you're describing sounds like you're still processing letters individually instead of hearing words and phrases as chunks. the brain needs time to make that switch and you can't really force it.

one thing that really helped me was doing head copy with actual QSO recordings instead of just the trainer. sites like lcwo.net have word training and i'd also recommend just tuning around 40m in the evenings and trying to copy real on-air stuff even if you only get half of it. the rhythm of real operators is different from a machine and it kind of unsticks things. also dont obsess over bumping the speed up, sometimes staying at a speed that feels almost too easy for a week or two and really cementing it does more than constantly pushing the ceiling. i know that sounds backwards but it worked for me. i went from stuck at 13 to comfortable at 18 in about two months once i stopped fighting it.

im in almost the exact same situation lol, around 13-14 and been there since like spring. one thing someone told me at my club was to set the character speed higher than the overall speed, like run characters at 20wpm but words spaced out so you have time to think. farnsworth spacing i think its called. the idea being your brain learns to hear the characters at speed even if you have extra time between them and then you gradually close the gap. havent been at it long enough to say if it really works but it seems to be helping a little bit so far.