so ive been a tech for about two years now and im thinking about upgrading to general but honestly the thing that keeps pulling me back is the idea of actually using cw. i know the code requirement is gone but everyone i talk to at the club says if you really want to get into hf and especially dx chasing you kinda need it eventually

my question is where do you even start. i downloaded like three different apps and none of them really clicked. one just showed me the dots and dashes as characters on screen which felt like the wrong way to do it, someone at the club said you should never learn it visually like that but i dont really understand why. is there a method thats actually worked for people. im not in a huge rush i just want to do it the right way from the start and not have to unlearn bad habits later

yeah your club guy is right about the visual thing, thats kind of the classic trap. you want your brain to associate the sound directly with the letter, not go sound -> dots and dashes -> letter, that middle step never goes away if you build it in from the start and it absolutely kills your ability to copy anything above like 5 wpm

the method most people swear by now is Koch method, and honestly just go straight to lcwo.net, its free and its set up around that approach. the basic idea is you start with just two characters but you learn them at full speed, like 20 wpm, instead of learning everything slow. sounds backwards but it works because your brain learns the rhythm and sound of each character instead of counting dits and dahs. took me probably three or four months of doing 15-20 minutes a day before i felt like i was actually copying in my head instead of just reacting to sounds

also look up the Morse Code Ninja stuff on youtube, that guy has a whole progression of files you can work through and its really well structured. just dont burn yourself out doing two hour sessions, short and consistent beats long and occasional every time with this stuff

im pretty much in the same boat as you actually, been using the Morse Mania app on my phone for a few months. its okay i guess, not sure im making as much progress as i should be. gonna check out that lcwo site the other guy mentioned

one thing i heard is that writing letters down while you copy slows you down too once you get to higher speeds, like eventually you have to learn to just hear a whole word as one sound or something. no idea how that even works but supposedly it does