so ive been trying to get into CW for a while now and i honestly dont even know where to start. i downloaded a couple apps but they all seem different and i cant tell if im learning the right way or just wasting my time. like do you learn the letters one by one or do you just listen to a bunch of it until it clicks? my elmer back in the day said something about not learning it visually which confused me. i guess my main question is just... whats the actual method that works for most people because ive been at this for maybe three weeks and i can barely copy a handful of letters without really thinking hard about it. is that normal or am i just slow at this

three weeks and you know a handful of letters, thats actually fine dont stress it. the thing your elmer said about not learning visually is real though, you dont want to be picturing dashes and dots in your head every time you hear something because at any real speed that falls apart fast. what most people swear by now is the Koch method, basically you start with just two characters at full speed, like 20wpm or whatever, and you add a new one only once you can copy those at like 90% accuracy. sounds slow but it builds the right kind of muscle memory. the app LCWO dot net is free and does exactly this, ive seen total beginners get to 10-12wpm in a few months using it consistently. key word being consistently, even 10-15 minutes a day beats doing an hour once a week by a lot.

yeah i went through this same thing last year. honestly the Just Learn Morse Code software helped me more than anything else, and also just listening to W1AW code practice broadcasts when i could. there's something about hearing actual on-air stuff that the apps dont quite replicate. also dont skip learning numbers and punctuation early, i made that mistake and had to go back and relearn stuff later which was annoying. took me probably four or five months before i felt comfortable enough to actually try a QSO and even then my first contact was a mess, the other op was super patient though