so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and i keep telling myself im going to get serious about morse code but every time i sit down to practice it just feels like im going nowhere. i can copy maybe 5wpm on a good day if the letters are ones i know well but anything faster and my brain just locks up completely

i've been using the Koch method on lcwo.net and also messing around with the Morse Toad app on my phone. the problem isnt really the individual characters at this point, i know most of them, its more like when they come at me in sequence at even like 8wpm i just cant keep up and then i miss one letter and then i panic and miss three more and suddenly im totally lost

does this get better? like is there a point where something just clicks? i really want to be able to ragchew on 40m some day but right now that feels pretty far off. any advice from people who actually made it through this would be awesome

oh man this brought back memories, i was exactly where you are probably 3 years ago. the panic spiral when you miss a letter is so real and honestly that's the thing you have to work on more than the speed itself

what helped me more than anything was just letting go of trying to copy every single character. like seriously, just accept that youre going to miss some and keep moving forward. your brain will actually start to fill in gaps from context if you let it relax a bit. trying to catch every missed character is what causes you to miss the next five

also i'd say dont increase your character speed at all for now, keep it at whatever feels slightly uncomfortable, maybe 15 or 18wpm character speed, but drop the word spacing way down so you get more time between letters. that farnsworth method thing is actually pretty solid. i went from fumbling at 5wpm to being comfortable around 18-20 over maybe 8 or 9 months of pretty casual practice, maybe 15-20 mins a day. just gotta be consistent more than anything, one long session a week doesnt do much

yeah the click moment is real, it does happen. cant tell you exactly when but one day you'll realize you copied a whole sentence without thinking about it and it kind of blows your mind

one thing i dont see mentioned enough is just listening to actual QSOs on the air even when you cant copy them yet. tune to 40m around 7.050 or so in the evenings and just let it wash over you. your brain starts to recognize rhythms and common words like CQ and 73 and signal reports before you even consciously learn them. also the RufzXP program is great once youre a bit further along for building speed but maybe not quite yet at 5wpm