so ive been a tech for about 8 months now and i keep reading about how people who know cw say its like this whole other level of ham radio, like they talk about it the way some guys talk about getting their first hf contact. anyway i decided i want to learn it even though theres no license requirement anymore obviously, just feels like something i should know.

problem is i have no idea where to start. like do i learn the alphabet first just visually and then learn to hear it, or do you just dive into audio from day one? i downloaded like three different apps and theyre all doing different things and i dont know which approach is actually going to work. one of them has me copying random letters and another one wants me to start with just E and T and build from there. also how long does this realistically take, im not trying to be a speed demon just want to be able to have a slow qso someday

the koch method is what you want, dont bother trying to memorize the patterns visually first, that stuff will actually slow you down later when you try to copy at any real speed. the idea with koch is you start with two characters at full speed, like 20wpm character speed, and you only add a new character once you can copy the current set accurately. LC Wooten wrote a good piece on this if you search around, and the app LCWO dot net is what a lot of people use, its free and browser based.

honestly the biggest thing people mess up is starting too slow. if you learn letters at 5wpm they start to sound like dit counts and you have to relearn everything when you want to go faster. start the characters fast even if the words have long gaps between them, thats what farnsworth spacing is for. took me about 4 months of 20 minutes a day to get comfortable enough for a QRS contact on 40m, but i already had some background with music which probably helped with rhythm.

im kinda in the same boat as you, been at it for like 6 weeks now using the Morse Mania app and also just listening to the W1AW code practice sessions they broadcast on shortwave, you can also get the text files from the ARRL site so you can check what you copied. the W1AW thing is cool because it feels like actual radio even if youre just listening, makes it feel more real than an app i guess.

i wont lie some days it clicks and other days i sit there and my brain just goes blank on a letter i knew yesterday, pretty frustrating. but people keep telling me thats normal so i just keep going