so ive been thinking about going for my general and eventually extra and i keep seeing people talk about cw and how much they enjoy it even though its not required anymore. figured id give it a shot but honestly i dont even know where to start. like do people just memorize the dots and dashes on paper or is there some better way to actually learn it. ive tried looking it up and theres a million different apps and websites and i cant tell which ones are actually worth using vs just garbage. also how long does it realistically take before you can actually use it on the air, not like contest speed just enough to have a slow qso

the biggest thing i'd tell anyone starting from scratch is don't learn the dots and dashes visually, like don't sit there memorizing that S is three dots on paper. you want to learn the sound of each letter as its own thing. look up the Koch method, thats what most people swear by now. basically you start with just two characters at full speed, like 20wpm, and you only add a new character once you can copy the existing ones reliably. sounds weird but it works way better than starting slow and trying to speed up later because your brain kind of gets locked into the rhythm of slow characters and its really hard to break out of it later.

for actually doing it, LCWO dot net is free and pretty decent for Koch training. a lot of people also use the Morse Toad app or Just Learn Morse Code. i used a combination of LCWO and just listening to a lot of QRS stations on 40 meters while i was learning. took me maybe 3 or 4 months of pretty casual practice, like 15 minutes a day, before i felt comfortable enough to actually get on the air at around 8 or 10 wpm. first real qso was terrifying but the other op was really patient

yeah im kinda in the same boat as you actually, been at it for about 6 weeks now. what i do is practice with the app during my commute and then i try to listen to the cw beacon on 10 meters when its open just to hear what real signals sound like vs the clean tones in apps. the app stuff is great but actual on air signals have qrn and fading and stuff and its a totally diffrent experience tbh. someone told me about the cwops cw academy which is free and has actual instructors but i havent signed up yet, thier waitlist seemed long when i checked