so ive been wanting to get into CW for a while now, i passed my general a few months back and everyone keeps saying i should learn morse even though its not required anymore. i get that. but everytime i sit down to actually try and learn it i just feel completely lost on where to even begin.

ive tried a few youtube videos but they just go through the alphabet super fast and i cant retain any of it. someone at my club mentioned the Koch method but i dont really understand how that works exactly. is there like a specific app or website that walks you through it step by step? i have no idea what speed i should be practicing at either, like do i start super slow or what

any help appreciated, just feeling like im going in circles here

okay so the Koch method thing — basically the idea is you dont start slow and speed up, you start at your target speed (say 15-20 wpm) right from the beginning but you only learn two characters at a time. so like K and M first, get those down solid before adding another letter. the reason people swear by it is your brain learns to recognize the sound as a whole character instead of counting individual dots and dashes which is a trap a lot of beginners fall into.

for actually doing it, LCWO dot net is what most people use, its free and follows Koch pretty faithfully. just set your character speed up higher than your effective speed if that makes sense — theres a thing called Farnsworth timing where the letters themselves are sent fast but the gaps between them are longer, gives you time to think without teaching your brain slow code. just stick with it honestly, the first few weeks feel completely pointless and then one day it just starts clicking. dont try to cram it all in one sitting either, like 15 minutes a day beats an hour on weekends

im kind of in the same boat as you lol, been at it for maybe 6 weeks now. the Morse Mania app on my phone helped me get the letters down at least. its not perfect but its something i can do while commuting or whatever. what really helped me was just listening to slow CW nets on the air even before i could copy anything, just to get used to what it actually sounds like outside of a practice program

also W1AW broadcasts code practice sessions at different speeds, thats an actual thing you can tune into or download from the ARRL site i think. a lot of people use those