so ive been a tech for about 8 months now and i keep hearing everyone talk about CW and how great it is and i finally decided i want to learn it. problem is i have no idea where to actually start. like do you just memorize the dots and dashes on paper or is there a better way to go about it? i downloaded like 3 different apps and they all seem to do different things and i honestly dont know which one is even worth sticking with.

also someone in my local club told me to learn at a higher speed from the start and not to bother with slow code, is that actually true? seems counterintuitive to me but i dont want to develop bad habits either. any advice would be appreciated, even just pointing me in the right direction would help at this point

yeah the speed thing your club guy mentioned is the Koch method basically — the idea is you learn at like 15-20 wpm from day one so your brain learns to recognize the sounds as characters instead of counting dits and dahs. if you learn slow you end up counting and then when you try to speed up later you hit a wall and its a real pain to unlearn. i went through that myself years ago and honestly wish someone had told me earlier.

for apps i'd say just pick one and stick with it, the jumping around is probably hurting you more than the app choice itself. LCWO dot net is what a lot of people use, its a web based thing and follows the Koch method pretty well. morse trainer apps are fine too but some of them let you go too slow which can reinforce the counting habit. the main thing honestly is just consistency, even 10-15 minutes a day beats doing an hour once a week. took me probably 4 months before i was making my first real QSOs on CW and they were rough but it works if you just keep at it

im literally in the same boat as you right now lol, been trying to learn for about 6 weeks. what i found helps me is just listening to actual on-air CW even when i cant copy most of it yet, like tuning around 7.050 or wherever and just letting it wash over me. probably sounds weird but i feel like my ear is starting to pick out letters i know. also just.com has some practice files you can download, theres slow QSO recordings which are nice for a beginner i think even if the speed thing is debatable