so ive been at this for about 3 months now and i feel like im completely stuck. started with the koch method on lcwo.net and got through the first like 8 characters at 5wpm no problem but now i just cant seem to push faster without my brain completely falling apart. i know people say to just listen at higher speeds even if you dont understand it yet but honestly that just makes me frustrated and i end up giving up after like 10 minutes.

my goal is eventually getting comfortable around 20wpm so i can actually have real QSOs on HF instead of just sending slow ragchews where the other guy is probably falling asleep waiting for me to finish a sentence. been licensed for about a year, general class, got a decent rig but cw feels like this whole separate mountain to climb. anyone go through this and actually come out the other side? what actually worked for you because im running out of ideas here

oh man i was exactly where you are maybe two years ago. the thing that finally cracked it open for me was stopping trying to copy every single character and just letting it wash over me for a while. sounds counterintuitive but i spent about 3 weeks just listening to W1AW practice sessions at 13wpm while doing something else, not even trying hard to copy, just getting my ears used to the rhythm of it. then when i actually sat down to copy it felt less like decoding and more like hearing words.

also the biggest thing nobody told me early on — ditch the paddle and just listen for a while before worrying about sending. your receive speed is what matters for actually having QSOs, your sending can lag behind. and honestly once you can copy at 15 or so the QSO part clicks into place faster than you think. stick with it, the jump from 5 to 12 feels impossible and then suddenly it just happens over like two weeks if you keep at it daily even for just 15 minutes.

just wanted to say im in basically the same boat so you're not alone lol. been sitting at like 7wpm for ages. someone told me to try the Morse Mania app for just drilling individual characters until they feel automatic and that helped a little bit. i think part of my problem is i still count dits and dahs sometimes instead of just hearing the whole character as a sound, like you know the way you recognize a word in english without sounding out each letter. havent fully gotten there yet but its getting better i think