so ive been at this for probably six months now and i just cant seem to push past that 10-12wpm range no matter what i do. started at 5wpm back in the spring and honestly that part felt pretty natural, like i could hear the letters fine and copy them down without too much trouble. but somewhere around 10wpm my brain just kind of falls apart and i start missing letters and then i lose the whole word trying to catch up and then im just writing down random guesses for the next few seconds until i can lock back in.

ive been using the lcwo website mostly, doing the koch method. also tried just of listening to qso365 podcast and some slow speed nets. my fist is decent i think, been told by a couple guys on the local club net that my sending is fine, its really just the receiving that kills me.

anyone else hit this same wall and manage to get through it? curious what actually worked. i know the usual advice is just practice more but im putting in like 20-30 minutes a day and its been months so clearly something isnt clicking

yeah the 10-12wpm plateau is super common, almost everyone hits it. what worked for me was honestly kinda counterintuitive — i actually bumped my practice speed UP to like 18-20wpm even though i couldnt copy it, and just let myself miss stuff. the idea is your brain starts to hear the characters as sounds instead of counting dits and dahs. if you slow it down too much you kinda slip back into counting mode without realizing it.

also the word space thing matters a lot. on lcwo you can set the character speed high but the word spacing wide so the overall pace feels manageable. its called farnsworth spacing i think. anyway that helped me a ton. took maybe another couple months after that before i felt comfortable around 15wpm and now im sitting around 18-20 on a good day copying ragchews. just dont give up, that wall is real but its not permanent

I had the exact same problem and what finally helped me was switching away from random letter practice and doing actual words and common phrases instead. Like abbreviations you hear all the time on air — 73, rst, qth, wx, all that stuff. once your brain recognizes them as chunks instead of individual letters it gets way faster. also just listening to real QSOs even when you can only copy maybe half of it, the context helps fill in gaps and thats a real skill too honestly.