so ive been thinking about getting into CW for a while now and i finally decided to just go for it but i dont really know where to start. i downloaded a couple apps and they all seem different and i dont know which approach is actually the right one. some people say learn the letters first slow, other people say jump straight into high speed stuff and your brain figures it out? thats the koch method i think? im not sure if im doing it right honestly

i guess my main question is just like... what actually worked for you. did you use software, did you just listen to QSOs on the air, did you take a class or whatever. im not in a huge rush but i also dont want to spend six months doing the wrong thing and still not be able to copy anything. any advice would be appreciated, even if its just what NOT to do

okay so the thing that finally made it click for me after years of half-heartedly trying was just committing to the Koch method properly using a program called LCWO, its a website actually, lcwo.net. the whole idea is you never learn letters slow and then speed them up, you start with just a couple characters at full speed from day one and add more as you get them solid. sounds counterintuitive but your brain starts hearing the rhythm as a sound instead of counting dots and dashes and thats really the whole game right there.

biggest mistake i made early on was writing down dots and dashes on paper. felt like i was making progress but i was just building a habit i had to unlearn later. if you catch yourself doing that, stop. just try to hear the whole character as one sound. took me probably three or four months of maybe twenty minutes a day before i could actually follow a slow QSO and that was at like 12-13 wpm. its a slow process but it does work

im kind of in the same boat as you and just started a few weeks ago, so take this for what its worth. i use the morse code ninja stuff on youtube, he has videos that go through each character and also these word practice videos which are actually really helpful once you know a few letters. i also found just having it on in the background while im doing other stuff helps a little but probably not as much as sitting down and actually focusing on it lol

one thing i heard is dont try to learn too many letters at once, like five or six max before you really drill them. anyway still a work in progress for me too