so ive been a tech for about 8 months now and keep hearing people talk about CW and honestly it just sounds really cool to me, like the idea of being able to just tap out a message with a straight key or whatever. but i have no idea where to start. i downloaded like three different apps and they all seem different and i dont know which approach is actually the right one. someone told me to learn with the koch method and someone else said just do character flashcards and now im just confused. is there a generally agreed on best way or is it just whatever works for you personally? i dont have any kind of time pressure on this, im just doing it for fun and maybe eventually want to actually use it on the air, not trying to pass any test or anything

honestly the koch method is what most people swear by these days and theres a reason for that. the idea is you learn each character at full speed from the start, like 20wpm, so your brain learns to recognize the sound as a whole thing instead of counting dits and dahs. if you learn it slow youll have to unlearn that later when you want to actually use it at speed and that process is painful, ask me how i know lol. lcwo.net is free and does the whole koch progression, i used that for a while. just do like 10-15 minutes a day consistently, that matters way more than doing an hour once a week. dont expect it to click fast either, i felt like i was getting nowhere for the first few weeks and then something just kind of shifted and it started coming together. also dont skip head copy practice once you get a few letters down, meaning dont try to write everything down, just listen and try to hold it in your head. that habit early on will save you a lot of grief later

im kind of in the same boat as you actually, been at it for about 6 weeks now. im using an app called Morse Mania which i think is fine for the very basics but i switched to just listening to actual QSOs on like 40m at night with slow speed stations. theres a frequency i forget the exact one where they specifically do slow code practice transmissions, someone on here probably knows what im thinking of. anyway hearing real callsigns and real exchanges somehow made it feel more real than practice tones and i feel like it helped me. i still cant copy much but its coming along i think