so ive been at this cw thing for about 3 months now and im stuck somewhere around 8-9wpm and it feels like a wall. i can copy at 5 no problem, like its almost too easy at that point, but the moment i push it up to 10 or 12 i start losing letters and then i panic and lose the whole word and then the whole sentence. its frustrating because i KNOW the letters, i can do them in my head fine but when theyre coming at me faster it all falls apart.

been using the lcwo site mostly, doing the koch method. also tried some youtube videos where they send actual qsos. my goal is eventually getting to 20wpm because i want to get on 40m cw and actually have real contacts, not just the super slow beginner stuff (though nothing wrong with that obviously).

just curious how long it realistically took other people to make that jump. like is 6 months reasonable? a year? i dont want to give up but some days it feels like im not moving at all.

that wall around 10wpm is super common, almost everybody hits it. whats happening is your brain is still sounding out individual letters instead of hearing whole words as a unit, and there's kind of a ceiling on how fast you can do that consciously. the jump to 20wpm really only happens when you stop thinking and start just... recognizing. like how you dont read individual letters when you read a book.

what helped me more than anything was listening to fast code even when i couldnt copy it. like just having a 20wpm qso playing in the background while i was doing something else. sounds weird but after a few weeks my brain started picking out words here and there. also the farnsworth method where the letters themselves are sent at a higher speed but with longer gaps between them — that trains your ears to recognize the character sound without relying on the slower timing as a crutch.

took me probably 8 months to feel comfortable at 20 but i wasnt super consistent about practice. if you do 20-30 min every single day you can probably do it faster than that. the consistency matters way more than doing long sessions occasionally.

honestly same boat as you like 2 years ago. i'll just say dont give up around the 10wpm mark because i quit for like 4 months and when i came back i had to start almost over. real code on the air helped me more than any software, even if i only got maybe 60% of a qso i kept at it. W1AW practice broadcasts too if you havent tried those, they have sessions at different speeds and you can find recordings online.