so ive been working on my CW for about 8 months now and i hit this wall at around 13wpm and just cannot seem to break through it. started back when i was doing 5wpm with the Koch method and honestly that part felt pretty natural, like each week i was adding a letter and it was clicking. but somewhere around the time i had all the characters down and started pushing the speed up it just... stopped working the same way.

right now i practice maybe 20-30 minutes a day with the LCWO site and sometimes just copy random QSO recordings i find online. i can get most of it but i have to write everything down as i go and if i miss a character i kinda panic and lose the next few too. someone told me i need to get off pencil and paper and start just listening but that feels really uncomfortable and i keep second guessing myself. anyone gone through this and actually gotten to 20wpm? feels like that number is impossibly far away right now honestly

yeah 13 is the wall almost everyone hits, its super common and doesnt mean anything is wrong with you. what happens is below that speed you can kind of sound out letters in your head but to go faster you have to stop doing that and just recognize whole words and common patterns as single sounds. its a different skill basically and your brain needs time to rewire a bit.

the pencil thing -- i'd say keep it but change what you write. instead of trying to copy every letter, just jot down key words, callsigns, numbers. let the filler words go. practicing with real QSOs is really good actually, better than random code in some ways because the language is predictable. you already kinda know someone's gonna say 599 or their name or QTH. that context helps your brain fill gaps.

also try bumping your character speed way up, like to 20 or even 25wpm, but drop the overall word rate so theres longer gaps between words. farnsworth spacing its called. sounds weird but it trains your ear to hear faster characters without the panic of keeping up in real time. took me about 3 months to get from 13 to 18 doing that

I went through almost exactly this same thing last year. Got to around 12-13 and just felt like i was grinding away going nowhere. What actually helped me was getting on the air even though i was terrified. Found the slow speed nets, there's a few of them, CWops has one i think and there's the slow net on 40m. Real QSOs feel different from practice because theres actual pressure and your brain pays attention differently.

Honestly the head copy thing is worth pushing through the discomfort. I started by just trying to hold the last 3 characters in my head before writing and slowly extended it. Takes a while but it does get better. You're closer than you think, 20wpm is not that different from where you are.