so ive been at this for about three months now and im stuck. like really stuck. i got my general back in the spring and decided i actually wanted to learn cw properly instead of just doing the minimum for a vanity call or whatever. started with the Koch method on lcwo.net and got through all the characters pretty fast, maybe six weeks. but now im at like 7-8wpm and every time i try to push up to 10 the whole thing just falls apart. i miss characters, i panic, then i miss more because im still thinking about the one i missed, you know how it goes.

i do about 20-30 minutes a day which is what everyone seems to recommend. using the G4FON trainer mostly. my question is more like -- how long did it realistically take people to get from that beginner plateau to actually being comfortable at 15 or 20wpm. i keep reading stuff that says 'just copy in your head dont write it down' but honestly at 10wpm i still need to write or i lose the word halfway through. is that normal at this stage or am i doing something fundamentally wrong

completely normal, dont worry about it. that 7-10wpm wall is real and pretty much everyone hits it. the writing thing -- honestly just keep doing it for now. the whole 'copy in your head' advice is good advice but its more for when youre trying to break through the 15-20 range. at 10 theres nothing wrong with writing, youre still building the character recognition reflex and your brain hasnt fully automated it yet.

what helped me more than anything was listening to actual QSOs on the air even when i couldnt copy most of it. like i'd tune around 40m in the evenings and just let it wash over me. your brain starts picking out callsigns and common words like CQ and 73 and DE without even trying. took me almost a year to get comfortable at 15wpm but i wasnt super consistent about practicing either. if youre doing 20-30 min every single day youll probably get there faster than i did.

yeah i went through exactly this about two years ago. the thing that finally unstuck me was the Farnsworth method -- basically you set your character speed high like 15 or 18wpm but the word spacing is slow enough that you have time to process. so your brain learns the characters at real speed but you get breathing room between them. G4FON does this i think, theres a setting for it. once i switched to that the plateau kind of broke on its own over a few weeks.

also just fwiw i started actually getting on the air around 10wpm even though it was terrifying. found the slow net on 40m and just jumped in. people on those nets are incredibly patient and honestly that did more for my speed than any trainer software because the adrenaline makes you focus in a way a computer cant