so ive been licensed for about 8 months now (tech) and ive been thinking about learning CW for a while but every time i look into it i get completely overwhelmed by the options. theres like the koch method and farnsworth and just using apps and youtube videos and i honestly dont know where to begin or which one actually works for people who are starting from absolute zero.

my goal isnt to become some CW contester or anything, i just want to be able to have a basic QSO someday and maybe use it on HF once i upgrade. is there a realistic path for a total beginner or is it really as hard as people make it sound? i feel like every forum thread i find is written by people who already know what theyre doing and assume you have some baseline

honestly it clicked for me when i stopped trying to memorize dots and dashes visually and just let my ears do the work. the Koch method is what most people recommend and theres a reason for that - you start with just two characters at full speed, like 20wpm, and you dont move on until you can copy them at 90% accuracy. sounds counterintuitive to go fast when youre learning but if you learn slow you just end up counting dits and dahs in your head and that habit is really hard to break later on.

lcwo.net is free and thats basically what i used, its nothing fancy to look at but it works. also the app Morse Mania is decent if you want something on your phone for commuting or whatever. the main thing is consistency, even 15 minutes a day beats doing an hour once a week. took me maybe 4 months of pretty regular practice to feel comfortable enough for a slow QSO on 40m and that was starting from zero. its not as bad as people say but it does require actually showing up every day

yeah im kind of in the same boat as you actually, been messing around with the Just Learn Morse Code software someone on another thread mentioned. its free and you can set it to Farnsworth timing which means the characters themselves are sent at normal speed but theres extra space between them so you have time to think. some people swear by it some people say it creates bad habits, i genuinely dont know who's right lol

one thing that did help me was finding a local club that does a slow CW net on like 7.050 or wherever your region does it, just listening even when you cant copy most of it is weirdly motivating