so ive been at this morse code thing for about eight months now and i honestly feel like im hitting a wall. started out with the Koch method back in the spring and got up to maybe 12-13wpm without too much trouble but now i just... cant seem to break through. ive read that there's some kind of plateau around here that a lot of people hit but knowing that doesnt really make it less frustrating.

my practice routine right now is mostly just running the G4FON trainer for like 20-30 minutes a day, copying random characters, and i do a little bit of the QSO practice sessions on there too. i want to eventually get comfortable at 20wpm because id really love to get into contesting and work some of the CW-only portions of big contests. right now i can barely copy a slow ragchew without losing letters when my brain tries to think too hard about what i just heard.

anyone who went through this have any advice? is it just a matter of grinding more hours or is there something specific i should be changing up? im starting to wonder if im practicing wrong somehow.

the plateau around 12-15wpm is super common and it usually means your brain is still hearing individual letters instead of words and sounds as a whole unit. what helped me break through was honestly just forcing myself to go faster than i was comfortable with, like setting the trainer to 18 or even 20wpm and just accepting i was gonna miss a ton at first. you kind of have to teach your ears to hear at the new speed even if your brain hasnt caught up yet.

also worth trying the word training mode if you havent, not just random characters. common words like 'the' and 'and' and callsign patterns start to become these little sound chunks your brain recognizes without having to decode letter by letter. that was a big shift for me. took probably another 2-3 months after i changed my approach but eventually it clicked. still not a contest guy but im comfortable at 18-20 now for normal qsos.

I went through basically the exact same thing last year, stuck at around 13 for what felt like forever. what finally got me moving again was actually just getting on the air and making real contacts even when i wasn't confident. SKCC has slow speed nets and the guys there are incredibly patient, like genuinely patient, nobody made me feel bad for asking for repeats. hearing real fists instead of machine-generated tones made a difference i didnt expect. the rhythm of how people actually send is different from a trainer and your ear adjusts. good luck, it does get better eventually