so ive been at this whole CW thing for almost a year now and i started from zero, went through the Koch method with the G4FON trainer and got up to 13wpm pretty consistently. im able to copy most of what i hear but then around 13-14 it just falls apart and my brain kind of freezes up and i start counting dits and dahs again which is basically what you're NOT supposed to do right

someone told me the plateau around 13 is really common and that you basically have to just push through it by listening at speeds faster than you can copy, like 17-18wpm, and just accept that youre going to miss stuff. does that actually work or is it just torture. ive been doing maybe 20-30 min a day on the software and some days i feel like im going backwards honestly

my goal is 20wpm, just want to be able to have a real ragchew on HF without it being a complete disaster. any advice from people who have actually done this would be really appreciated

yeah the 13wpm wall is absolutely a real thing, i hit the exact same spot and spent probably 3 months spinning my wheels before something finally clicked. what worked for me was two things -- first i stopped trying to "study" code and just started listening to actual QSOs on 40m with the volume low while i was doing other stuff around the shack. not trying to copy everything, just letting it wash over me. sounds dumb but i think it retrains your brain to hear whole words instead of individual characters.

the second thing was i cranked the character speed way up like to 25wpm but kept the farnsworth spacing really wide so i had more time between characters. that way your ear gets used to what fast characters actually sound like even if the overall pace is slow. G4FON lets you do that and so does the LCWO website. took me another couple months but i went from 13 to like 18 in what felt like a pretty short stretch once things started moving again. just dont give up and dont go back to counting, thats the killer

im kind of in the same boat as you actually, sitting around 12wpm right now so watching this thread. one thing i heard at our club meeting was that some guys swear by just making actual contacts even when its uncomfortable, because the pressure of a real QSO makes your brain work differently than software. havent tried it yet myself but the old timer who said it has been doing CW for like 40 years so probably knows what hes talking about lol