so ive been at this for about four months now and im kind of stuck. started learning CW back in the spring just for fun really, wasnt expecting to love it but here we are. got comfortable enough copying at 5wpm that i could decode most stuff in my head without writing everything down, felt pretty good about that.

but now im trying to push past that and honestly its like hitting a wall. i tried just cranking up the speed on my Koch trainer but my brain just turns to mush above maybe 8 or 9wpm. someone at my local club told me to use the Farnsworth method where you keep character speed high but space them out more, and that did help some but im still not really making progress the way i was in the first couple months.

i guess my question is - is this normal? did anyone else go through this plateau thing and actually get through it? and how long did it realistically take you to hit 20wpm? i keep reading these stories of guys who got there in like 3 months and i dont know if those people are just wired differently or what

yeah the plateau around 8-10wpm is pretty much a universal experience, you are definitely not alone there. what happens is below that speed your brain is still sounding out individual dits and dahs and kind of assembling the letter consciously. to get faster you have to rewire things so the whole sound of a character just means something instantly, same way you read a word without spelling it out in your head.

what finally worked for me was just a ton of head copy at uncomfortable speeds. i set my trainer to like 15wpm character speed with long Farnsworth spacing and just lived there for a couple months even though i was only maybe getting 70% copy. your brain adapts, it really does, but it takes longer than the first stage. also honestly just getting on the air and making yourself have real QSOs helped me way more than any trainer software. even if you only catch half of whats being sent you start to recognize patterns and common phrases and that builds speed in ways drills dont quite capture.

20wpm took me probably 18 months of pretty inconsistent practice so dont sweat the guys claiming 3 months, either they had a musical background or they are exaggerating a little

im kind of in the same boat as you, been working on it since winter and the 10wpm mark is just brutal for me. one thing that helped me a little is just listening to actual on-air CW even when i cant copy most of it, like just running it in the background while im doing other stuff. not sure if thats actually doing anything scientifically but it feels like it keeps my ear at least somewhat engaged with the sounds. also LCWO dot net if you havent tried it, theres a word training mode that i think works better than random characters for getting your copying speed up