so ive been at this for about 8 months now and im kind of stuck. started learning CW back in the spring and got to around 5wpm pretty quick using the Koch method and just drilling letters every night. but somewhere around 10-12wpm things just fell apart for me. i can copy individual letters fine if i think about it but by the time im processing one character the next two have gone by and then im just lost.

ive heard people say you should just jump your sidetone speed way up and copy what you can, which sounds terrifying honestly. been using LCWO and also just listening to W1AW code practice sessions when i remember to. my send speed is actually better than my receive which i did not expect.

anyway curious what actually clicked for you guys if you went through this plateau. did you just grind through it or was there some specific thing that helped. feels like im close but also feels like 20wpm is a million miles away some days.

oh man the 10-12wpm wall is real, that hit me hard too. what finally broke it for me was honestly just forcing myself to not write anything down for a while. like i would sit and listen to QSOs on 40m and just try to follow the conversation in my head without a pencil in my hand. at first i caught maybe one word in ten but after a few weeks something shifted and my brain started grouping sounds into whole words instead of individual dits and dahs.

the other thing that helped was setting LCWO to like 20wpm character speed with extra spacing between letters, the Farnsworth method i think its called. your brain learns the rhythm of each letter at speed but you still have time to process. it feels like cheating but it really does work. took me probably 4 more months of consistent practice after that to get comfortable around 18-19wpm. never quite cracked 20 on a cold copy but in a real QSO i do fine because context helps so much.

dont give up, the plateau is just your brain rewiring itself. its happening even when it doesnt feel like it.

just jump to 15wpm and accept that you'll miss stuff. thats pretty much what my elmer told me and i thought he was crazy but it worked. after like two weeks of suffering through it my copy got way better. the suffering part is important i think lol