so ive been a tech for about 8 months and lately ive been thinking about getting my general and actually getting into HF but honestly the thing that keeps pulling me back is wanting to learn CW first. i know its not required anymore but i just feel like id regret it if i never learned it properly.

the problem is i have no idea where to start. theres like a million apps and websites and youtube videos and i genuinely dont know which approach is actually worth the time. ive heard some people say just learn the letters slow and speed up later, and other people say you have to learn it fast from the beginning or you'll never get past a certain speed. which is it? also how long did it actually take you to get to a point where you could have a basic QSO

okay so the fast vs slow thing — the people telling you to learn it fast from the start are talking about something called the Koch method, and honestly they're not wrong. the idea is you learn each character at like 20wpm character speed even if the overall spacing is slow, so your brain learns to hear the sound as a whole thing instead of counting dits and dahs. if you count dits and dahs you will hit a wall around 10-12wpm and it becomes really hard to push through it later. been there, done that.

look up LCWO dot net, its free and its basically the go-to for Koch method practice online. also the app Morse Mania is decent for mobile. the honest answer on time is it really varies, i know guys who could hold a basic ragchew in maybe 3 or 4 months of daily practice, and others who took a year. depends how consistent you are more than anything else. even 15 minutes a day beats two hours on the weekend.

im kind of in the same boat as you actually, been using an app called Ham Morse and its pretty good but i keep getting distracted and skipping days which is probably my whole problem lol. one thing that helped me was just listening to slow CW on the air even before i could copy it, like just having it on in the background while im doing other stuff. not sure if thats scientifically the right thing to do but it feels like it helped me get comfortable with how it actually sounds vs the app. anyway still very much a work in progress over here so dont take my advice too seriously