so ive been a tech for about 8 months now and i keep seeing people talk about cw on here and it honestly sounds kind of cool but i have absolutely no idea where to begin. like do you just memorize the dots and dashes on a chart or what? i tried that once and got nowhere fast. someone at my club mentioned the koch method but i dont really understand what that means in practice. is there an app or a website that walks you through it or do i need to buy something. also how long does this realistically take to get to like 5 wpm, i know everyone is different but ballpark. i feel like this is one of those things thats easier if someone just shows you the right path first instead of you figuring it out by trial and error

the koch method is basically where you start with just two characters at full speed, like 20wpm, and you dont move on until you can copy them reliably, then you add one more character at a time. the whole idea is you never learn to read the dots and dashes visually, you just train your ear to recognize the sound as a whole. lcwo.net is free and does exactly this, i used it for maybe 15-20 minutes a day for a few months and it genuinely worked. there is also an app called morse mania that a lot of people like for mobile practice. dont bother with the paper chart thing, that really does just slow you down because your brain tries to count instead of hear. 5 wpm is honestly achievable pretty quickly once things start clicking, the jump from recognizing letters in isolation to copying actual words is the hard part but it comes. just be consistent, even 10 minutes a day beats an hour on the weekend

yeah what he said about the chart is true, i wasted probably two weeks doing that and had to basically start over. i use justa app called hammorese or something like that, cant remember the exact name but you can find it easy enough. one thing nobody told me was to practice copying by hand writing it out, not typing, something about writing it slows you down enough that your brain processes it better i guess. im still only at like 8wpm after 6 months but i only practice like 3 times a week so thats on me honestly