so i've been a tech for about a year and i finally upgraded to general last month and i keep seeing people talk about CW and how they love it and i got curious. i tried looking stuff up online and theres like a million different methods and apps and websites and i dont really know where to start or which way is even worth doing. like do people still learn the whole dit dah chart thing or is there some better way now. i downloaded one app but it felt like i was just memorizing patterns for each letter which someone told me is wrong but i dont totally understand why. anyway just wondering how people here actually did it when they were learning, what worked, what didnt

the thing about memorizing the patterns on paper like dit dah dah for W and whatever is that it works until you try to actually copy anything at speed and then your brain is too slow trying to decode each letter from the chart in your head and you freeze up. the way most people recommend now is the Koch method or just learning with the Morse Toad or LCWO website where you start hearing each letter at like 20wpm but with extra space between them so your brain learns the sound not the visual pattern. took me probably 3 months of doing like 15 minutes a day before i could actually have a slow QSO without totally falling apart. the LCWO site is free and it tracks your progress which helped me a lot to see i was actually getting somewhere even when it felt like i wasnt

yeah ive been at it for about 6 months now and honestly the just do it approach works better than overthinking the method imo. i used the app called Morse Mania for a while and then switched to just listening to actual QSOs on like 14.025 or wherever and trying to copy what i could even if it was only one or two words. felt dumb at first but it starts clicking eventually. still not great but i can get through a basic exchange now without panicking too bad