so ive been doing morse code practice for about 3 months now and im stuck somewhere around 8-9wpm and honestly its frustrating because i feel like i plateaued. i started with the Koch method using the G4FON trainer and it was great at first, went from nothing to about 5wpm pretty fast, but now every time i try to push to 10 or above my brain just kind of freezes up and i miss characters and then i fall behind and its this whole cascade thing.

somebody at my local club told me i should be practicing at like 20wpm character speed even if the word spacing is slower, the Farnsworth method i think, but i havent really tried that consistently. been mostly just doing random 5 minute sessions here and there when i feel like it which is probably my real problem honestly.

just curious how long it took other people to get to solid copy at 20wpm and if there is some method that actually worked for you. ive heard everything from just listen to QSOs on the air to do the LCWO site to just do a little every day no matter what. would love to know what actually clicked for people

the plateau you're describing around 8-9wpm is super common and theres actually a name for it sometimes, the "code plateau" and it happens because your brain is still sounding out dits and dahs individually instead of hearing the whole character as one sound. the Farnsworth thing your club buddy mentioned is real and it works, but you gotta be consistent with it, like doing it for 20 minutes every single day beats an hour on the weekend every time.

what clicked for me was honestly just listening to actual on-air QSOs even when i couldnt copy much. something about hearing real signals with real operators doing real exchanges made my brain start recognizing common words and abbreviations almost automatically. 73, CQ, UR, RST... you hear those enough and they just become units, not individual letters. took me maybe 6 months of daily practice to get comfortable around 15wpm and another few months after that to feel solid at 20. dont rush it, the speed comes when it comes

im in basically the same boat lol been sitting at 10wpm for like two months. tried bumping up to 13 and it just felt impossible. someone on reddit suggested just copying one word at a time and not worrying about getting the whole sentence, which actually helped a little bit for me. also LCWO has this word training thing where you can do common English words and that felt less stressful than random letters. anyway no real advice just solidarity i guess, its hard