so ive been licensed for about 8 months now (tech) and i keep hearing people talk about cw and how great it is for low power stuff and dx contacts and whatever else, and i guess i got curious enough to actually try learning it. problem is i have no idea how to even approach it. like do i just start memorizing dits and dahs? i tried writing out the alphabet chart and staring at it for a while and that felt completely useless.

i also downloaded like three different apps and they all seem to do something different and i dont know which approach is actually good vs which ones are gonna teach me bad habits or whatever. someone at my club mentioned the koch method but didnt really explain what that was. is that what most people use? and how long does this realistically take before i can actually copy something on the air, even slow stuff

yeah forget staring at the chart, thats probably the worst way to do it. you want to learn the sounds not the dots and dashes, like your brain needs to hear K and just know its K without going through some mental translation step first. the koch method is basically starting with just 2 characters sent at a normal speed (like 15-20 wpm) and you only move on when you can copy those accurately, then add one more character at a time. the idea is your brain learns the rhythm of each letter at real speed from the beginning instead of starting slow and having to relearn it later. that relearning thing is a real problem, i went through it myself.

for apps, LC Morse on android is pretty solid and actually follows the koch method properly. LCWO.net is the website version and a lot of people swear by it. just pick one and stick with it for a few weeks before deciding it isnt working. consistency is honestly the whole game here, even 10-15 minutes a day beats doing an hour once a week. as for timeline, realistically copying simple qso stuff at 5-7 wpm took me maybe 2-3 months of daily practice but i wasnt super dedicated about it. some people are faster, some slower, dont stress it

im kind of in the same boat as you actually, been at it for about 6 weeks now. what helped me was just listening to a lot of cw on the air even before i could copy anything, like just tuning around 40m in the evenings and letting it wash over me. felt pointless at first but i think it got my ear used to the rhythm somehow. also there's this youtube channel, i forget the name exactly but if you search morse code practice slow there are some videos with the character written on screen as its sent which helped me a lot early on when i was just learning individual letters