so ive been licensed for about 8 months now (general class) and keep hearing people talk about cw and how great it is for dx and weak signal stuff and im kind of curious about learning it. problem is i have zero idea where to start. like do i just memorize the dots and dashes on a chart or is there some better way to go about it. ive seen apps mentioned but dont know which ones are actually worth using vs just being garbage. also how long does it realistically take before you can actually have a qso and not just recognize a couple letters. any advice appreciated, i feel like im overthinking this whole thing

okay so the chart thing -- dont do that. seriously just dont start by memorizing the visual patterns because youll end up counting dits and dahs in your head forever and youll never get fast enough to actually copy anything in real time. what you want is to learn it by sound from day one. the Koch method is what most people recommend and theres a free program called LCWO dot net that does it pretty well, it starts you at like 20wpm character speed even when youre a beginner which sounds crazy but it forces your brain to recognize the sound as a whole unit instead of counting. just do it 10-15 minutes a day consistently and youll have all the characters down in maybe a month or two depending on how much you stick with it. then theres a whole other phase of just building up copy speed which takes longer but honestly the first part isnt as hard as people make it sound. also look up the Morserino if you want a hardware practice tool eventually, its pretty neat but not necessary to get started

i started learning cw last year and honestly just used the morse code app on my phone during my commute. took me way longer than i expected lol but i had my first real qso at maybe 8-9 months in, just a simple signal report exchange but still felt pretty good. the hardest part for me was going from knowing all the letters to actually copying stuff sent by a real person because they dont always send perfectly and you panic when you miss something. there are slow speed cw nets you can listen to before you try jumping in, W1AW does code practice transmissions on HF at different speeds and thats free. i used to just listen and try to copy whatever i could even when i missed half of it