so ive been trying to learn CW for probably 6 months now and i feel like im completely stuck. started with the Koch method on lcwo.net and got up to about 5wpm copying pretty reliably but every time i try to push it to 7 or 8 it just falls apart completely. like my brain just stops processing and i miss everything after the first couple letters.

ive been doing maybe 20 minutes a day which i know probably isnt enough but life gets busy. i really want to get to 20wpm eventually because id love to actually use CW on HF but it feels so far away right now. anyone been through this same wall and managed to get past it? what actually worked for you

oh man i went through exactly this, it took me probably a year to get from 5 to 15 and then another few months to push past 20. the thing that actually helped me the most was just completely ignoring the idea of copying everything perfectly and forcing myself to sit with uncomfortable speeds. like set lcwo to 13wpm even if you only catch 30% of it and just do that every day. your brain will eventually start to catch up, it just takes longer than you expect.

also the biggest thing people dont talk about is that copying on paper actually slows you down eventually. once i switched to just listening and mentally acknowledging each character without writing anything down it clicked a lot faster. you want the letters to just pop into your head automatically, not go through this whole decode-write cycle. took me a while to trust that but its really the way to go once you get past the absolute basics. also honestly 20 mins a day is fine, consistency beats long sessions every time at least thats been my experience

same boat here, kind of. im at about 8wpm now and the jump to 10 feels impossible some days. one thing that helped me a little was finding actual on-air QSOs to listen to instead of practice software all the time. W1AW still does code practice broadcasts on HF and there's something about real signals with real fists that makes your brain work differently than computer generated tones. worth trying if you havent already