so ive been a ham for about a year now and finally decided to actually learn morse code properly. i can copy at maybe 5wpm on a good day if the sender is really clean but anything faster and i just fall apart. like my brain completely freezes up trying to remember what letter i just heard while the next one is already coming in.

ive been using the LCWO website and doing some of the koch method lessons but im not sure im doing it right or if im just not practicing enough. i do maybe 20-30 minutes a day when i get the chance. my goal is eventually getting to 20wpm because i hear thats kind of the magic number where ragchewing on CW actually gets fun and you stop having to think so hard about every character.

has anyone gone through this process and can share what actually worked for you? im worried im developing bad habits or something. also should i be copying by hand or typing it out, i keep going back and forth on this

oh man this brings back memories. i went through the exact same wall around 5-7wpm and it felt like i'd never get past it. the thing that finally clicked for me was stopping writing altogether and just listening. like completely put the pencil down for a while. your brain starts to panic when you fall behind writing and then you miss the next character and it snowballs. just let the sounds wash over you without trying to capture every single one.

the other thing and i cant stress this enough — practice at speeds faster than you think you can copy. set LCWO to like 15 or 18wpm character speed even when youre still doing 5wpm effective speed. this is the farnsworth method and it trains your ear to hear the characters as sounds not as counted dots and dashes. if you learn at slow character speed youll have to relearn everything later, trust me i made that mistake and it cost me months.

20wpm is definitely achievable, took me about 18 months of inconsistent practice but the guys who are disciplined about it get there faster. just dont give up when you plateau, those plateaus are real but they do break eventually

honestly im kind of in the same boat as you so take this with a grain of salt but one thing i started doing that seems to help is just listening to actual QSOs on 40m in the evenings, like around the cw portions below 7100. even if i can only copy maybe every third word its starting to train my ear to real operators instead of the computer generated stuff. some of those elmers on 40m CW are incredibly patient and send really clean code too.

also someone on here told me about a app called Morse Mania that i've been messing with on my phone during lunch breaks, its not perfect but its better than nothing when im away from the radio