so i got my technician license a few months back and ive been on 2m and 70cm mostly but i keep hearing about HF and CW and honestly it sounds really cool to me. i know morse code isnt required anymore for the license but i still want to learn it, just feels like the right thing to do if youre gonna be a real ham i guess.

problem is i have no idea where to start. i downloaded like three different apps and they all seem kind of different in how they teach it. one of them just shows you the dots and dashes visually which i heard is actually the wrong way to do it? someone at my local club mentioned the Koch method but i dont really understand what that means. is there a specific order i should learn the letters in or does it matter? and how long does it realistically take before you can actually use it on the air, like copy a QSO in real time

yeah dont bother memorizing the dots and dashes visually, thats gonna slow you down bad later on. what you want is to hear each character as a sound, like the letter K should just sound like K to your brain without you counting anything. thats the whole idea behind Koch -- you start with just two characters at a relatively high speed, like 20wpm, and you dont move on until you can copy those two at 90% accuracy or whatever. then you add one more character. it sounds slow but it builds the right habits from the start.

for resources, lcwo.net is free and its basically the go-to for Koch method online. also look up the Just Learn Morse Code software if youre on windows, thats what i used. and honestly just listen to actual CW on the bands even before you can copy it, tune around 7.025 or so in the evening and just let it wash over you. your brain starts picking things up even passively. took me maybe 4 or 5 months of pretty consistent daily practice before i felt okay enough to actually call CQ on CW, but im glad i did it the way i did

im in basically the same boat as you lol, started trying to learn a few weeks ago. i've been using an app called Morse Mania which seems decent, and also the Ham Morse app. what i found is doing even just like 10 minutes a day is way more effective than doing an hour on the weekend, at least for me. my brain just retains it better when its spread out.

one thing that tripped me up is i kept trying to write down every letter while copying and i just couldnt keep up, someone told me to practice copying by typing instead and that helped a lot. still nowhere near ready for the air but i can copy most letters now without thinking too hard about them