so ive been at this morse code thing for about a year now. started with the Koch method app on my phone and got up to around 13wpm pretty comfortably but now i just cant seem to push past it no matter what i do. i practice like 20-30 minutes every day, sometimes more on weekends. i can copy solid at 13 but the moment i bump it up to 15 everything falls apart and i start writing letters down instead of just listening and letting it flow.

someone at the club meeting told me to just crank the speed way up like to 25wpm and listen even if i cant copy it, let my brain get used to the sound of the characters at high speed. another guy told me to not do that and just slowly work up 1wpm at a time and not move on until i can copy for 5 straight minutes without errors. both of these seem like they contradict each other and i dont know who to listen to. been at 13wpm for like 4 months now and its getting a little discouraging. anyone gone through this and come out the other side at 20 or better?

oh man i was stuck at exactly 13 for a while too, felt like hitting a wall. what finally worked for me was the high speed exposure thing but not exactly how your club guy described it. i didnt try to copy at 25, i just listened to QSOs on 40m where guys were running maybe 18-20wpm and just tried to pull out callsigns or a word here and there. not stressing about copying everything, just getting my ears used to real code at speed. after a few weeks of that alongside my normal practice sessions i noticed 15 started feeling a lot less panicky.

also someone on here mentioned LCWO dot net if you havent tried it, you can set character speed and overall speed separately which is huge. so you can have characters sent at 20wpm speed but with longer gaps between them. helps your brain learn the right sound for each letter without the overall pace being overwhelming. took me from 13 to 18 in maybe 3 months doing that along with the on-air listening. youre not stuck, the plateau is real and almost everyone hits it somewhere in that 12-15 range from what ive seen.

yeah the Farnsworth method that other person mentioned is legit, thats basically what LCWO does. i went through the same thing going for my extra and wanted CW even though its not required anymore just because it seemed like a cool skill. honestly the thing that helped me most was just getting on the air even when i wasnt ready. i started calling CQ real slow on 40m and when people came back too fast i just sent QRS and asked them to slow down. most guys are really cool about it and some of them became my regular skeds. nothing beats actual QSOs for building speed, copying practice files is fine but real contacts have that pressure that somehow makes your brain work harder.