so ive been at this for about 8 months now and the progress has been kind of frustrating honestly. started at 5wpm with just the Koch method stuff on the G4FON trainer and got up to around 13wpm pretty smoothly, but now im just stuck. like i can copy text fine if im relaxed and not thinking about it too hard but the moment i start a real QSO my brain just locks up and i fall apart after like 20-30 characters.

i know people say the jump from 5 to 15 is easier than 15 to 20 but man i didnt expect it to feel this bad. my sending is probably better than my receiving at this point which is a weird place to be. anyone been through this and actually made it to 20wpm? what finally clicked for you? i practice every day on the trainer but im wondering if im doing something wrong or if this is just the grind everyone talks about

yeah that plateau around 12-15wpm is real and pretty much everyone goes through it. what got me through it was basically forcing myself off the software and onto actual QSOs on 40m, even when it was painful. the W1AW practice broadcasts are good too because the speed bumps up gradually in the session and you kind of get dragged along with it.

one thing nobody told me that made a huge difference — stop copying every single character. seriously just let some go and keep your pencil moving. once i stopped trying to be perfect and just accepted i was gonna miss stuff, my brain relaxed and the speed came naturally over a few weeks. also make sure youre hearing the characters as whole sounds not dits and dahs, if youre still counting elements at 13wpm thats probably whats holding you back. took me about 6 months of actual on-air time to solidly hit 20 and another year to feel comfortable there

im kind of in the same boat lol, sitting around 11wpm right now so ill be watching this thread. one thing i did recently was start using LCWO.net instead of just G4FON and the word training mode helped a lot more than random characters for me personally. something about recognizing common words made it feel less like decoding and more like actual reading if that makes sense