so i've been at this for about 8 months now and i just want to share what's been working for me in case anyone else is grinding through the same thing. started at 5wpm with the koch method on lcwo and honestly the first few weeks were rough, like really rough. i kept second-guessing myself and counting dits in my head which everyone tells you not to do but its really hard to stop once you start.

the thing that finally clicked for me was just accepting that i was going to miss stuff and not freezing up when that happened. i read somewhere that your brain needs to hear the whole character as a sound not a pattern and that really changed how i practiced. instead of drilling for an hour straight i started doing like 20 minutes max but every single day without fail and just bumped the character speed way up to 20wpm even though my effective speed was way lower.

anyway i just hit 15wpm copying actual QSOs on 40m last night and i could barely believe it. still a long way from 20 but it doesnt feel impossible anymore. if anyone else is stuck around that 10-13wpm range and wants to swap notes i'm happy to talk through what helped. and if anyone who's already past 20 wants to give me a reality check on what i should be doing different, i'm all ears.

congrats on pushing through that wall, that 10-13 range is where a lot of people just quit so you should feel good about sticking with it. the farnsworth spacing thing you mentioned (character speed high, effective speed lower) is really the key and it took me forever to trust that it actually works. i kept wanting to slow everything down and it just made my brain start counting again.

one thing i'll throw out there — once you're solid at 15, try copying without writing anything down for short bursts. like just listen to a minute of cw and then write what you remember after. sounds counterintuitive but it forces your brain to actually process the sounds as words instead of just transcribing. took me from 17 to about 22 faster than anything else i tried. also just getting on the air and actually making contacts helped more than any practice software honestly, even when i was a mess at it. people are usually pretty patient if you let em know you're still learning.

im in almost the exact same boat lol, stuck at like 12wpm for the past two months and its driving me nuts. did you use any specific practice audio on 40m or just tune around and try to copy whatever? i feel like i can do fine on lcwo but then i tune into an actual qso and it just sounds like noise to me, different fists and the qsb and everything just throws me completely off.