so ive been working on CW for about eight months now and i honestly dont know what im doing wrong. started with the Koch method back in the spring using LCWO and got up to around 13wpm which felt great at the time but now i just... cant seem to move forward. every time i try to copy at 15 or 16 i fall apart after maybe 30 seconds and then i get frustrated and drop back down to 13 where it feels comfortable again.

my goal is 20wpm because i want to get on 40m CW and actually have real QSOs without making a fool of myself. right now i can handle the slower QRS stuff but even that feels shaky when someone sends with really clean fist versus a straight key with weird timing. anyway wondering if anyone else hit this wall around 13-14wpm and what actually helped. ive heard people say just push through but that feels like not real advice lol

oh man yes, 13wpm was my wall for like four or five months and i almost gave up on CW entirely. what finally worked for me was stopping the LCWO random character drills for a while and switching to actually copying real QSOs off the air, just listening even if i couldnt get everything. your brain starts learning the rhythm of how people actually send instead of perfectly timed computer characters. W1AW slow speed practice is good for this, they post the text ahead of time so you can check yourself after.

also someone told me to bump my character speed way up, like set characters to 20wpm but keep the farnsworth spacing slower so your ear learns what fast characters actually sound like. when you eventually close the gap it feels more natural. took me a few weeks of that before 15wpm started clicking. you'll get there, the plateau is super normal from what ive seen

The plateau around 12-15 wpm is genuinely one of the most common things I see with newer CW operators and there's actually a decent explanation for it. Below that speed your brain has enough time to consciously think through each character. Above it you have to start recognizing whole patterns without thinking, and the transition between those two modes is where people get stuck. It's not a skill problem, it's more like your brain needs to rewire a bit.

What worked for me decades ago and what I still recommend is short high-intensity sessions rather than long frustrated ones. Ten minutes at a speed that's just barely uncomfortable, then stop. Come back later. Don't grind through an hour of being miserable because that just builds negative associations with copying. Also honestly just get on the air and make some contacts even if its sloppy, real QSOs teach you things that no practice software can replicate. The guy on the other end has heard worse, I promise.