so ive been thinking about learning CW for a while now and i finally decided to just go for it but i honestly have no idea where to start. ive seen people mention the koch method and also just the old fashioned way of learning dits and dahs for each letter but thats apparently not the right approach anymore? i dont know. i tried one of those youtube videos where they just play the sounds over and over and i could sort of pick up the letters but then when i tried to actually copy anything real i was completely lost. not sure if im doing something wrong or if its just supposed to be that hard at first.

also does anyone use a straight key to start or should i jump straight to a paddle, i have a cheapo straight key that came with some kit i built but ive heard paddles are easier. mostly want to use it on HF eventually, probably 40m to start. any advice appreciated, been licensed for about 2 years but never touched CW.

the koch method is definitely the way to go, forget the dit-dah chart stuff, it really does create bad habits and you end up counting instead of just hearing the characters. the whole idea is you learn at full speed from the start, like 15 or 20 wpm character speed even if the words come slow, so your brain learns the sound not the pattern. LCWO dot net is free and thats what most people use to actually do the Koch lessons, you just work through the letters one at a time and dont move on until you can copy at like 90% accuracy.

as for the key question, honestly start with whatever you have. a straight key is fine for learning the rhythm and getting a feel for it, some people swear by it for building timing. paddles are nice later on but they require a keyer and theres a bit more to think about at first. dont overthink the gear side of it, the learning is all in your ears anyway. expect the first few weeks to feel totally useless, thats normal, somewhere around week 3 or 4 it usually starts clicking.

im in the same boat pretty much, started about 4 months ago using the morse code ninja videos on youtube, the guy does these head copy practice sessions at different speeds and i found that way more useful than just drilling letters. still pretty slow, maybe 8 wpm on a good day copying random words but callsigns still mess me up. i use just.learn.morse.code app on my phone when im commuting and that helped a lot for the letter recognition part.

one thing i will say is dont skip practicing every single day even if its just 10 minutes, the days i skipped i felt like i went backwards somehow. also just listening to actual qso's on the bands even when you cant copy most of it seems to help your brain get used to the rhythm of real CW which sounds different than practice files for some reason.