so I've been a licensed tech for about 8 months now and I keep hearing people talk about CW and how great it is and I kind of want to learn it but honestly I have no idea where to start. like do I just memorize all the letters first or what? I tried looking it up and there's like a million different methods and apps and I dont know which ones are actually worth using vs which ones are just garbage. somebody at my local club mentioned the Koch method but I didnt really understand what he was explaining and I felt dumb asking him to repeat it again. is there a specific order to learn letters in? and how long does it realistically take before you can actually use it on the air, not just tap out letters in your living room

okay so the Koch method is basically where you start with just two characters at full speed - like 20wpm or whatever your target speed is - and you only add new characters once you can copy the current ones at like 90% accuracy. the whole idea is your brain learns the sound as a whole, not dit-dah-dah = D, just D sounds like D, if that makes sense. a lot of people including me tried the slow speed approach first and then had to relearn everything because they got stuck at 5wpm and couldn't break through it.

for actually doing it, LCWO.net is free and it uses the Koch method, just make sure you set the character speed high even if the overall speed is slow - that's the Farnsworth timing thing. G4FON also has a trainer you can download. took me maybe 4-5 months of maybe 20 minutes a day before I felt comfortable enough to try a QSO, and that first contact was still terrifying honestly. just stick with it, the early weeks are rough but it does click eventually

ive been learning for a few months too and honestly what helped me the most was just listening to actual QSOs on the air while following along with a decoder so you can see what's being sent. like tune to 40m around 7.050 or so in the evenings and just listen, you'll start recognizing callsigns and common phrases before you even realize it. theres also this youtube channel I forget the name of but if you search like morse code practice slow there are people who record themselves sending really clean slow code which is good for beginners. the apps are kinda hit or miss in my experience, Morse Mania on android is decent for like learning letters individually but its not really enough on its own