so ive been doing morse code practice for about 3 months now and im stuck. like genuinely stuck. i started with the Koch method using LCWO and got through all the characters without too much trouble, was copying at around 5wpm pretty comfortably. but now trying to push it up to anything above 8 or 9wpm and my brain just kind of seizes up. i hear the character and i KNOW i know it but theres this delay where i have to think about it and by then ive missed the next two characters already.

been doing about 20 minutes a day which i read is enough but maybe its not? or maybe im doing something wrong. i use the 20/10 farnsworth timing thing which helps but im not sure if i should be increasing character speed or spacing first or both at the same time or what.

also i keep reading about people who say they got to 20wpm in like 6 months and honestly that sounds impossible to me right now. anyone been through this plateau and actually gotten through it? what worked for you

oh man this is exactly where i was about a year and a half ago and i almost quit honestly. the plateau around 8-10wpm is super common and i think its because thats where you stop being able to spell out letters one by one and you have to start hearing whole words as sounds. its a mental shift more than a speed thing if that makes sense.

what finally broke it for me was switching from random character groups to actual words and common phrases. like once i started hearing CQ and 73 and QTH as single sounds instead of a string of dots and dashes it clicked. also i bumped my Farnsworth character speed up to like 18wpm even though my effective copy speed was way lower, that forces your brain to stop thinking dit-dah-dit and just recognize the whole sound pattern.

and the 20 minutes a day thing, thats fine but consistency matters way more than duration in my experience. id rather do 15 minutes every single day than 45 minutes three times a week. took me about 8 months to get to 20wpm solid enough to pass the extra exam back when that was still a thing, so 6 months is possible but dont beat yourself up if it takes longer

just gonna say the real word copy thing is huge. i wasted months on random QSO practice files before someone pointed me at the common word lists and it made a real difference pretty fast. also try listening to actual QSOs on 40m even if you cant copy everything, just getting used to the rhythm and the way real operators send helps more than you'd think