so ive been licensed for about 8 months now, tech class, and i keep hearing people talk about cw and how great it is for weak signal stuff and dx and whatever else. i got curious and started messing around with it a little but honestly i have no idea how people actually learn this. like do you just memorize all the dots and dashes on a chart or is there a better way? i tried printing out one of those charts and just staring at it but that doesnt seem to be working at all. my brain just isnt retaining it. someone at my club said something about the koch method but i dont really know what that means. is there like an app or a website that actually works well for this? im not trying to get a license or anything (obviously) just want to be able to at least copy some simple qsos eventually

yeah the chart thing doesnt really work, at least not for most people. the whole point of the koch method is you learn to hear the characters as sounds rather than counting dots and dashes in your head, because if youre counting youll never get fast enough to actually use it. LCWO dot net is what i used, its free and you can set it up to do koch from the beginning. starts you with just K and M and you get those down before adding more letters. the key thing everyone says and its actually true -- learn it at full speed from the start, like 15-20 wpm character speed even if the words come slow. if you learn at 5 wpm youll just have to relearn everything later.

also just be patient with yourself, it took me probably 4 or 5 months of messing around maybe 15 mins a day before i could actually copy anything useful. some people get it faster. morse code trainer app on android is decent too if you want something on your phone for commuting or whatever

im kind of in the same boat as you actually, been at it for like 6 weeks using that LCWO site the guy above mentioned and im on like letter 12 or 13 now i think. honestly some days it clicks and some days i feel like ive forgotten everything. what helped me was also just listening to actual cw on the air even when i cant copy hardly any of it, like tuning around 40 meters in the evenings and just hearing the rhythm of it. theres also this thing called the word of the day podcast for cw learners but i havent actually tried that one yet someone just told me about it