so ive been at this for about four months now and im just kind of spinning my wheels. started with the ARRL code course tapes (yeah i know, old school) and got up to copying maybe 5 or 6 wpm pretty comfortably but every time i try to push past that i just fall apart. like my brain just stops working around 8-9wpm and i start trying to count dots and dashes again which i know is wrong but i cant help it.

a buddy at the club said i should try the Koch method and i downloaded that lcwo.net thing but honestly im not sure im using it right. do you just sit there and drill individual characters forever or is there a point where you switch to actual words and QSOs? also how long per day are people actually practicing because i feel like i do 20 minutes and then im useless after that.

anyway just looking for what worked for real people not just the textbook answer. im not in a hurry or anything, just want to get there eventually. 73

Koch method is genuinely the way but you have to trust the process even when it feels like nothing is happening. the thing that tripped me up for the longest time was exactly what you described — falling back into counting elements the moment speed goes up. what helped me was setting the character speed high, like 20wpm, and just accepting that I was going to miss a lot at first. the spacing between characters is what you reduce over time, not the character speed itself. that's the Farnsworth method and it basically forces your brain to hear the whole character as a sound instead of counting pieces.

for practice time, honestly 15-20 minutes focused is worth more than an hour of half-paying-attention. I used to do it right after dinner every night and just stuck with it. once I could copy single characters reliably I switched to the word lists on lcwo and then just started listening to W1AW code practice transmissions which are free and they publish what they sent so you can check yourself. took me about 8 months total to get comfortable around 15wpm and another few to push past that, but it does click eventually.

same boat here not too long ago, the Koch thing felt really slow and boring at first but it works. one thing nobody told me was to not skip characters even if you think you know them already, i skipped ahead and paid for it later lol. also try just listening to cw while you do other stuff, not trying to copy it just having it on in the background. sounds dumb but i think it helped my ear get used to faster speeds without the pressure of actually copying. G4FON's trainer is pretty good too if you want something offline.