so ive been licensed for about 8 months now (tech, just upgraded to general last month) and i keep seeing people talk about CW and how great it is and i guess i want to learn it but i have no idea where to start. like do you just memorize the dots and dashes or is there a better way to do it. i tried making flashcards but that felt wrong somehow and i gave up after a week. someone at my local club said to learn it by sound not by visual but i dont really understand what that means practically. is there an app or a website or something that actually works for beginners, theres so much stuff out there and i cant tell whats good. also how long did it take you, like realistically

ok so the flashcard thing is exactly the wrong approach, dont feel bad for quitting that. the whole point is your brain needs to recognize the sound as a letter without any intermediate step, like you hear dit-dah and your hand just writes A without you thinking about it at all. the way most people do it now is with the Koch method which basically starts you with just 2 characters at full speed, like 20wpm or whatever, and you only add a new character once you can copy the current ones at like 90% accuracy. sounds slow but it actually works way better than trying to learn everything at 5wpm which just trains your brain to count dits and dahs.

LCWO.net is free and does Koch method, thats probably where id start. also there's an app called Morse Toad which some people like for commutes or whatever. honestly the biggest thing is just doing it every day even if its only 10 minutes, consistency matters way more than doing an hour session once a week. took me about 6 months to feel comfortable enough to have a slow QSO on the air, but i wasnt super disciplined about it either

yeah im in basically the same boat as you, started trying to learn a few months ago. the LCWO site the other guy mentioned is what im using and it does seem to be working slowly. what helped me was also just listening to actual CW on the bands even when i cant copy most of it, like just having it on in the background while im doing other stuff. not sure if thats actually a real technique or if im just convincing myself lol but it feels like my ear is getting used to the rhythm of it at least. theres also a youtube channel i found that does slow practice QSOs which was helpful for understanding how an actual contact flows, cant remember the name right now but if you search slow speed CW practice you'll find it