so ive been at this for about 8 months now and im honestly starting to wonder if im doing something fundamentally wrong. started with just w1aw code practice files and got comfortable enough at 5wpm that i could copy most of it without too much trouble, but every time i try to push past maybe 8 or 9 wpm i just fall apart. like completely. its like my brain just stops processing and i start panicking and then i miss the next three characters trying to figure out the one i missed.

a guy at my club told me to jump straight to 20wpm with farnsworth spacing which i tried for a few weeks but honestly it just felt demoralizing and i wasnt sure i was actually learning anything or just guessing. maybe i gave up on that too soon? hard to say.

anyway im curious what actually clicked for you if youve been through this. did you just grind through it? use a specific app or program? practice a certain amount of time per day? ive heard lcwo is good but havent dug into it much yet. i want to get to 20wpm eventually, would really love to make some actual qsos on cw someday instead of just listening.

the farnsworth thing really does work but you gotta stick with it longer than feels comfortable, thats the whole deal. your brain needs to learn the sound of each character at full speed before anything else matters. if you slow down the characters themselves youre basically teaching yourself a different language that you'll have to unlearn later.

what helped me more than anything was just doing it every single day even if only for 15 minutes. consistency beat long sessions every time. i used lcwo and did the koch method starting from scratch even though i already knew the alphabet — felt silly at first but going character by character and only adding a new one when you hit 90% accuracy on the current set, something about that just builds real solid recognition instead of kinda-sorta recognition.

also — and this took me forever to accept — stop writing everything down. try to just hear words. even if you only copy one word out of five at first thats fine. copying on paper slows your brain down in a weird way once you get past a certain speed. you want it to feel more like listening to someone talk than decoding a puzzle.

honestly the thing that got me unstuck was just getting on the air and actually making contacts even when i was terrible at it. i know that sounds scary but there are slow speed nets specifically for people learning, like the slow speed net on 40m, and most cw ops are incredibly patient if you tell them youre still learning. copying real qso traffic with all the pressure of a live contact made my brain work harder than any practice file ever did. i went from maybe 10wpm to 15 in like two months just from doing that a few times a week. still not at 20 but im getting there