so ive been a tech for about a year and a half and i keep hearing people talk about CW and how its this whole other world of operating and honestly it sounds really cool but also completely intimidating. i dont even know the alphabet yet. like zero. i tried downloading one of those apps a while back and it just felt like noise to me, couldnt tell the dits from the dahs at all really.

is there like a good order to learn the letters or do you just throw yourself at all 26 at once? and how long did it take you guys before you could actually copy anything resembling a word. i have no idea if im being realistic expecting to hold a QSO within like 6 months or if thats way too optimistic. also not sure if i should be using an app or actual audio recordings or what. any pointers appreciated

the single biggest thing i can tell you is dont learn it visually. like dont sit there memorizing dot dash dot for R or whatever. you want to hear the rhythm and just know the letter, same way you dont sound out every letter when you read a word. the Koch method is what most people recommend and honestly it works, you start with just two characters at full speed like 20wpm and you dont add a new one until you can copy the ones you have at 90% accuracy or so. sounds slow but it actually builds the right habits.

LC Morse Trainer and LCWO dot net are both free and do the Koch method. i used LCWO and it took me maybe 4 months of like 15-20 minutes a day before i could pull calls out of a pileup at around 12 wpm which felt like a huge deal at the time. 6 months is totally doable for a basic QSO if you stay consistent, thats the hard part honestly, doing a little bit every single day beats doing an hour once a week by a lot

im kind of in the same boat as you actually, been at it for about 3 months now. what helped me was just listening to a lot of W1AW code practice recordings, they have them on the ARRL site and you can download the audio files. i would just listen in the car on the way to work not even trying hard to copy, just getting my ear used to the rhythm of it. probably doesnt work for everyone but i felt like it helped before i started actually drilling letters. still cant copy much above maybe 8 wpm but its starting to click a little