so ive been at this CW thing for about a year now and i started from basically zero. got up to 13wpm pretty quick actually, the first few months were great, every week i could feel myself improving. but now its like i hit a wall and i cant seem to push past 13 no matter what i do.

my routine is pretty much just using the lcwo site for like 20-30 mins a day, doing the Koch method lessons. im on lesson 28 or so i think. i can copy most characters fine but when i try bumping the speed up to 15 or 16 the whole thing falls apart and i get frustrated and drop back down again.

i know people say the jump from 5 to 20 is nonlinear and that it gets harder in the middle somewhere but man i didnt expect it to feel this discouraging. anyone else go through this plateau phase? did something specific actually help you break through it or is it just a grind it out situation

oh yeah the 13-15wpm wall is a real thing, almost everyone hits it. what happens is you're still decoding characters one at a time in your head instead of hearing whole words as sounds. the brain has to make a switch at some point where it stops translating dits and dahs and just... recognizes the pattern directly. that switch doesnt happen on command, it happens when you force it to.

what actually helped me was two things. first i stopped going back down when i got frustrated. i know that sounds harsh but dropping back to a comfortable speed every time you struggle is basically just reinforcing the lower speed. second i started using the word training on lcwo instead of just character drills, common words at a speed thats just a little too fast, so you miss some but not all. your brain starts to fill in gaps and that builds the pattern recognition faster than perfect copying does.

also honestly just getting on the air even when you're not ready helped me more than any software. people slow down for you if you ask, and real QSOs have context which makes copying way easier than random code groups.

im kind of in the same boat so watching this thread. im at about 11wpm and feeling stuck too. one thing i heard is that doing head copy instead of writing everything down helps build speed but i find it really hard to trust myself to remember even a callsign without scribbling it down lol. maybe thats part of my problem too