so i just got my technician license a couple months ago and ive been reading about HF and CW and honestly morse code seems kind of cool but also completely impossible to learn as an adult. like im not a kid who can just absorb stuff anymore lol

i tried one of those youtube videos where someone just plays letters at you and i could not retain anything after like 20 minutes. is there a method that actually works or do people just suffer through it until it clicks? i dont even know if i want to use it for contesting or just general HF contacts, i just want to at least be able to copy my callsign and a signal report someday

also how long did it take you, roughly, because some people say months and some people say years and i genuinely cant tell if theyre exaggerating

the thing that actually made it click for me was the Koch method, specifically using a program called LCWO dot net, its free and you basically learn one character at a time but always at full speed — like 20wpm character speed — instead of slowing the dashes and dots way down. slowing it down is what messes people up because then when you try to copy real signals your brain cant recognize anything

took me about four months of maybe 20-30 minutes a day to get to where i could copy 15wpm solid enough to have a slow ragchew. some guys get there faster. honestly the biggest thing is consistency, even just 15 minutes every day beats an hour on the weekend. once you get to maybe 10 characters down, go find some slow CW nets on 40m and just listen, even if you cant copy most of it your brain starts making connections you dont even notice

yeah i went through basically the same thing, tried a few different apps and none of them really stuck until someone on here (or maybe it was the reddit) told me about Morse Mania on my phone. its kind of gamey which helped me not quit after day three lol

honestly i still cant copy a full qso but i can get callsigns and RST reports now which is kind of what you said you wanted so maybe thats a good starting point. dont get discouraged if some letters just wont stick, for me it was B and 6 that kept tripping me up for like two months for some reason