so ive been at this CW thing for about 4 months now and im stuck. not like completely stuck but it feels like ive been sitting at around 12-13wpm for the past 6 weeks and i just cant seem to break through. when i first started i was using the ARRL code course tapes (yeah i still have those lol) and got up to 5wpm pretty fast, then switched over to just.learn.morse on my phone and that helped a lot getting up to about 10-11. but now its like hitting a wall.

i practice maybe 20-30 minutes a day, sometimes more on weekends. im doing the koch method but i honestly dont know if im doing it right because i never really understood the exact way you're supposed to progress. like do you move to the next character only when you hit 90% on the current set? because sometimes i feel like im close but not quite and i just move on anyway.

for guys who actually went through this, how long did it take to get from that beginner 5wpm range up to a solid 20wpm copy? and did you ever plateau like this? im not in a huge rush but i do want to be able to do some actual QSOs on 40m without totally embarrassing myself

the plateau you're describing around 12-13 wpm is SO common, almost everyone hits it there. what happens is your brain is still hearing individual letters and trying to consciously decode them, and at some point you have to make a mental shift to hearing whole words and common phrases as sounds instead of dit-dah sequences. its honestly less of a skill thing and more of a brain rewiring thing if that makes sense.

what helped me break through was two things. first i bumped my character speed way up — like set farnsworth timing so letters come at 20wpm but with extra space between them. that forces your ears to learn the sound of each character at speed even if you're only copying at 12. second thing was just copying actual on-air QSOs, even if i only got maybe 40% of it. real signals with real fists and real QSB are different from perfect computer generated tones and your brain adapts fast when stakes feel real. took me probably 8 months total to get comfortable at 20 but i wasnt always consistent with practice so your mileage may vary

honestly just keep going, the plateau is normal. i went through the exact same thing around 13wpm and thought i was just one of those people who would never get faster. what eventually worked for me was doing the lcwo.net site — not sure if youve tried that one but it lets you set character speed and effective speed separately which is basically farnsworth spacing. also the daily practice streak thing on there kept me accountable in a way the phone app didnt.

one thing i'll say though — dont move on from characters before you're really solid on them, the 90% threshold is there for a reason and i skipped ahead too fast early on and had to go back and fix some bad habits with certain letters. G and W tripped me up forever because i hadnt really locked them in