so ive been at this for about 3 months now and im kind of stuck around 10-12wpm and honestly its getting a little frustrating. i started with the Koch method using the G4FON trainer and got to 5wpm pretty quick but now the progress has really slowed down. i practice maybe 20-30 minutes a day when i can, sometimes less if work gets crazy.

my question is really just how long did it take other people to get from that beginner stage up to actually being able to hold a conversation on the air at like 20wpm. i feel like i keep reading these posts where people say they got there in 6 months but then i also hear stories of people practicing for years. trying to figure out if im doing something wrong or if i just need to be more patient. also wondering if switching to a different trainer or method would help or if thats just me looking for shortcuts

Honestly the plateau you're hitting around 10-12 wpm is super common, almost everybody goes through it. The brain is basically rewiring itself to stop counting dits and dahs and start recognizing whole characters as sounds, and that transition takes time and can feel like you're going backwards sometimes.

One thing that really helped me was the Farnsworth method — sending characters at the target speed you want (like 20wpm character speed) but with longer gaps between them so your overall word rate stays manageable. The idea is your brain learns to hear the characters at full speed from the start instead of getting used to slow drawn-out tones that you then have to unlearn later. G4FON does this too if you havent already played with those settings. Also I'd say copying real QSOs off the air, even just as listening practice before you can really decode everything, gets you used to the rhythm of actual operators which is different from generated practice text. took me probably 8 months to get comfortable around 17-18wpm but i was only practicing maybe 15 min a day so your mileage may vary

same boat here lol, been stuck at like 11wpm for what feels like forever. someone in my local club told me to just try copying text from ARRL W1AW practice transmissions on the air even if i can only get half of it, said something about how it just clicks eventually. havent tried it much yet but figured id mention it