so ive been working on my CW for about a year now and i started at 5wpm with just der borse and some youtube videos and honestly getting from 5 to around 12-13 felt pretty natural, like it just clicked at some point. but now im completely stuck and its been maybe 3 or 4 months of just spinning my wheels at this same speed and i cant figure out what im doing wrong.

i practice for like 20-30 minutes most days, mostly copying random 5 letter groups from an online generator, but im starting to wonder if thats actually the problem. someone at my radio club mentioned the Farnsworth method and i kind of half understood what they were said but didnt want to ask too many questions. also wondering if i should just be trying to copy actual QSOs instead of the random letter groups. my goal is 20wpm eventually, doesnt need to be fast, just enough to be comfortable on 40m cw.

any advice from people whove been through this would be great, im not giving up on it just frustrated

oh man i was exactly at this same wall around 13-14wpm for what felt like forever. the thing that finally got me moving again was stopping the random 5 letter groups completely. your brain just learns to hear individual letters instead of building that whole word recognition thing that you need to get faster. switch to real words, common ones, and honestly just copying real QSO traffic off the air even if you can only catch half of it. the RufzXP program helped me a lot too, its a callsign copying program and it auto adjusts speed based on how youre doing which is kind of addictive.

the farnsworth thing your club guy mentioned is worth understanding though -- basically the idea is you send the characters themselves at a high speed like 20wpm but put extra space between them so your brain learns the sound of the letter at the speed you eventually want, not the slow mushy version. if youre practicing at 13wpm character speed you might be building habits that are actually hard to break later. some people swear by this approach from day one. either way dont give up, 20wpm is very doable and once it clicks past like 18 it gets easier again weirdly enough.

just chiming in because im kind of in the same boat, sitting around 15wpm now and trying to get to 20. one thing i found helped was listening to faster code even when i cant copy it at all, like put on a 25wpm QSO and just let it wash over you while doing something else. sounds weird but i think it helps your ear get used to what fast code sounds like. also LCWO.net has some good exercises if you havent tried it, more flexible than a lot of the other sites for setting up custom drills. good luck, this part of the journey is definitely the grind part lol