so ive been at this for about 8 months now and im kind of stuck. started learning morse back in the spring mostly just to challenge myself, got to 5wpm pretty quickly with the Koch method and JustLearnMorseCode software, felt great about it. but ever since i hit somewhere around 10-12wpm i feel like ive just been plateauing for the past couple months and i dont really know what to do differently.

the problem i think is im still mentally counting dits and dahs on some letters even though i know i shouldnt be. like i hear a letter and sometimes i just know it instantly, but then other letters i catch myself going through the pattern in my head and by the time i figure it out ive missed the next two characters. its really frustrating because i can tell im so close to something clicking but its not clicking.

ive been doing about 20-30 minutes a day with the LCWO site which i really like, and occasionally copying real qsos off the air but honestly most of those are still too fast for me to follow. does anyone have experience pushing through this specific wall? like not beginner to intermediate but more that intermediate plateau where the method stops mattering as much? would love to hear what actually moved the needle for you.

yeah that counting thing will absolutely kill your speed, you gotta let that go and it honestly just takes time and repetition but there are some things that helped me personally. what worked for me was bumping the character speed way up even while keeping the overall word speed lower — so like set your characters to 20wpm or even 25wpm but use Farnsworth spacing to slow the overall pace down. that way your brain is forced to hear letters as sounds instead of patterns because they go by too fast to count. then you just slowly tighten the Farnsworth spacing over weeks. it felt weird at first but after a few weeks something genuinely did click and i stopped translating and started just hearing.

also and i know people say this all the time but copying real QSOs even when you only get 40% of it is weirdly valuable. your brain fills in context and that skill is actually really important for real operating. dont worry about getting everything, just let it wash over you for a while.

im kind of in the same boat as you actually, sitting around 13wpm and feeling like my head is full lol. one thing that helped me a little bit was switching to head copy instead of writing everything down — like just listening and not even trying to write it out. felt impossible the first few days but after a week or so i noticed short words were just coming to me without thinking. still a work in progress but figured id mention it since nobody told me about that until pretty recently and it made a difference. good luck man its a slow road but worth it from what i hear