so i passed my technician like 6 months ago and ive been thinking about getting into CW for a while now. i know its not required anymore but something about it just seems cool and i want to learn it properly. the problem is i have no idea where to even begin. i downloaded a couple apps but i dont really know if im doing it right or if im just wasting time. do you just memorize the dots and dashes like on a chart or is there a better way? ive heard people mention something called the koch method but i dont really understand how that works either. any tips would be helpful, im pretty lost honestly

forget the charts, seriously just forget them. that whole dots and dashes memorization thing is a trap that slows you down later because your brain ends up doing an extra translation step instead of just hearing the letter directly. the way to do it is learn each character as a sound from the very beginning, like dit-dah is A, not dot dash is A. the koch method is actually really solid for this — basically it starts you with just 2 characters at full speed, like 20wpm, and you only add a new one once you can copy the current set at something like 90% accuracy. LCWO.net is free and does this automatically for you, just set it up and work through the lessons. honestly even 15 minutes a day is enough if you're consistent, the problem most people have is doing 2 hours one day then nothing for a week

im in basically the same boat as you lol, been at it for about 3 months now. i use an app called Morse Mania on my phone and its pretty decent for beginner stuff. what helped me click was watching some youtube videos by a guy who just talks about how to actually hear the rhythm of letters instead of counting the beeps. once i stopped trying to count i started getting it a little faster. still pretty slow though, maybe 8-10 wpm on a good day. the on-air practice stuff is way harder than the apps but theres some slow code nets out there if you search around