so i got my technician a few months back and ive been reading a bit about HF and keep seeing people mention CW and how its supposedly this whole other world once you get into it. im kind of curious but also have no idea where to even start. like do people still actually use it or is it more of a historical thing at this point

i tried messing around with one of those morse code apps on my phone for about 20 minutes and it felt completely impossible. how long does it take to get to where you can actually use it on air. is there a method that actually works or do you just have to grind it out

yeah it definitely feels impossible at first, i wont lie to you. the big thing that made a difference for me was switching away from trying to count dots and dashes and just learning the sound of each letter as like a rhythm or a word. theres a method called Koch where you start with just two characters at a time at a faster speed, like 15-20 wpm, and only add new ones once you can copy the first ones accurately. sounds counterintuitive but it works way better than learning slowly because your brain ends up hearing each letter as its own sound instead of a series of elements you have to decode.

LCWO dot net is free and pretty much what most people use for Koch method practice. there's also the Morse Code Ninja guy on youtube who has a ton of drills at different speeds which are great once you have the characters down and want to start building speed. the apps are okay but most of them teach it wrong honestly, too slow, too much visual association with dots and dashes.

people absolutely still use CW on air, the low bands especially, 40 and 80 meters at night you'll hear plenty of it. and QRP guys love it because you can make contacts with like 5 watts that you just cant do with SSB.

im in kind of the same boat as you actually, been at it for about three months now. the LCWO site is what everyone recommended to me too and its been slow going but i can copy most letters now at around 15 wpm even if sending actual words is still rough. what really helped me was just doing 10-15 minutes every single day rather than a long session once in a while, like consistency seems to matter more than how long you practice each time at least thats been my experience so far