so ive been at this for about eight months now and im kind of stuck. started learning morse back in the spring, got to around 5wpm pretty quickly with just doing the alphabet over and over, felt great about it. but ever since then ive been spinning my wheels trying to break through and actually get faster and it just isnt clicking the way the early stuff did.

im using the Koch method now, well sort of -- i started with it late so i already knew all the characters but i went back and started the Koch sequence anyway because everyone says thats the right way. im doing maybe 20-30 minutes a day with LCWO and some Just Learn Morse Code on my phone during lunch. copy is still pretty rough past like 8 or 9wpm, i start missing letters and then i fall behind trying to figure out what i missed and then i miss the next thing and it just snowballs.

has anyone actually gone through this and come out the other side at 20wpm? feels like a long way off right now. curious what made the difference for you, whether it was a specific program or just more time on the air or what. im not in any rush but id like to get there eventually, hoping to do some actual qsos on cw before the end of the year.

yeah that plateau around 8-10wpm is super common, almost everyone hits it. what worked for me was forcing myself to listen at a higher speed than i could copy -- like set the character speed way up, 20wpm or even 25, but stretch out the spacing between characters so you have time to process. Farnsworth timing they call it. the idea is your brain starts to hear letters as sounds instead of counting dits and dahs, which is the thing that kills most people at that stage.

also and this is the big one -- stop writing everything down. i know it feels wrong but trying to write every letter is what causes that snowball effect you're describing. practice head copy, even if you only catch half the letters at first. let the ones you miss go and focus on the next one. it gets better faster than you'd think once you commit to it. i went from stuck at 10 to comfortable 18-20wpm over about four months doing mostly that plus some time on 40m just listening to QSOs even when i couldnt copy them fully.

im kind of in the same boat actually, been at it six months, so following this thread. one thing my elmer told me was to just get on the air even when you feel totally not ready, he said actual QSOs teach you things that no practice software can because the other person is real and it matters somehow psychologically. havent quite worked up the nerve yet but maybe soon. good luck to you