so i got my technician license a few months ago and ive been reading about CW and honestly it sounds really interesting but i have no idea how to actually start learning it. like do people still actually use it on the air or is it just a thing people do for fun at this point? i downloaded a couple apps but i dont really know if im doing it right or if theres like a method i should follow. some people told me to just listen to it a lot and others said to start sending right away and im getting contradictory advice everywhere. i guess my main question is just... how did you learn it and what actually worked

okay so this is something i feel pretty strongly about because i wasted like 6 months doing it the wrong way before someone set me straight. the biggest mistake beginners make is learning the characters too slow, like starting at 5 wpm and trying to memorize the dit-dah patterns consciously. that just trains your brain to count instead of hear. look up the Koch method, thats what finally worked for me. you start with only 2 characters but you learn them at full speed, something like 20 wpm, and you slowly add characters as you nail each one. LCWO dot net is free and does exactly this, ive sent probably a dozen new hams there over the years. its slow going at first because youre starting from nothing but the stuff actually sticks. also just get used to the idea that it takes months, not weeks. dont rush it and dont give up after the first week when your brain feels like mush

yeah people definitely still use it, 40 meters especially is crawling with CW activity late evenings. im still learning myself honestly, been at it about a year and im maybe at 12 wpm on a good day which feels slow but whatever. i use the morse code ninja videos on youtube and just have them on in the background sometimes while im doing other stuff, not sure if thats actually helping or not but it feels like it is lol. the main thing i noticed is you really cant rush it, some letters just take forever to click and then one day it just does. Q was the last one i got and now i hear it immediately without thinking which is kind of a weird feeling