so ive been a tech for about 8 months and i keep seeing people talk about CW on here and it seems really cool but i have no idea how to even begin learning it. like do i just memorize the dots and dashes on a chart or what? i tried that and it really didnt stick at all. i know the license doesnt require it anymore but i still want to learn it, partly because i think it would be cool to make contacts with it and partly because ive heard it works better when signals are weak

anyway i was wondering if anyone had like a method that actually works for beginners. i feel like theres a lot of different opinions out there and i dont know which direction to go. is there software i should use or should i get a key first or what comes first basically

okay so the biggest mistake most people make is exactly what you did -- trying to memorize the dots and dashes visually. like A is dot dash, that kind of thing. that approach will absolutely wreck you once you try to copy anything at speed because your brain ends up translating the sounds into symbols and then into letters and by then youve missed the next three characters

what you want to do is learn the sounds as sounds. each letter has its own rhythm and you need to learn to hear B as its sound, not as dash dot dot dot. the Koch method is what most people recommend and theres a free program called LCWO.net that does exactly this -- it starts you with just two characters, K and M i think, and you have to get like 90% accuracy before it introduces another one. its slow at first but you end up actually knowing the code instead of just recognizing it

also and this is important, learn at a speed faster than you think you can handle. like 15 or 20 wpm character speed even if the words are spaced out slow. if you learn at 5 wpm you will have to relearn everything later. Farnsworth spacing is what that technique is called, the characters themselves are fast but theres extra space between them so you have time to think

dont bother buying a key until you can at least copy a few letters reliably, sending can come later and you dont need hardware to start

i learned from the Just Learn Morse Code software and also used the Ham Morse app on my phone a lot when i was commuting. honestly just having it on my phone meant i could practice like 10 minutes here and there throughout the day instead of only when i was sitting at my desk and that made a huge difference for me. took me probably 4 or 5 months to feel comfortable enough to actually call CQ on 40m and my first real QSO was terrifying but also kind of amazing

one thing nobody told me was that copying in your head is really different from copying with a pencil so practice both. and dont give up if you plateau, everyone does around the 10-12 wpm range supposedly and it feels like you just cant get faster but then something clicks