so ive been at this for about 8 months now and i feel like im stuck in the mud. started out doing the Koch method at 5wpm which honestly was fine, slow but i got all the characters down and was feeling pretty good about myself. somewhere around 10-11wpm things clicked and i was copying decent chunks of text without too much trouble.

but now im sitting at about 13wpm and it feels like a wall. i can do it but i have to really concentrate and if i miss a character i kind of spiral and lose the next few words trying to figure out what i missed. been using LCWO and also just listening to W1AW practice sessions whenever i can. my sending is probably better than my receiving at this point which i know is kind of backwards.

did anyone else hit this specific plateau or is it just me being impatient. my goal is 20wpm eventually, not in a huge rush but id like to get there this year. any drills or approaches that actually helped you break through would be great to hear about.

yeah that 12-15wpm range is notorious for being rough, you're not imagining it. what helped me more than anything was just accepting the missed characters and moving on - like forcing myself to not backtrack mentally. took a while to actually internalize that but once i did my copying speed jumped pretty fast. also i switched from copying every character on paper to just listening for a while, like doing what some people call head copy, just sitting and listening to QSOs at maybe 17-18wpm even though i couldnt get it all. your brain starts to pick up patterns in the code even when you dont realize it.

the W1AW stuff is good but honestly just tuning around 40m in the evenings and listening to real ragchews helped me more. the rhythm is different from practice recordings. give it another month or two at 15wpm before you push harder, the plateau usually breaks on its own if you just keep at it consistently.

im kind of in the same boat actually, around 14wpm right now and it feels sticky. one thing i read somewhere was to practice at like 18 or 20wpm with really long character spacing - i forget what its called, farnsworth something? - so your brain gets used to the actual sound of the characters at speed even if the words come slowly. i tried it for a few weeks and it did seem to help a little. might be worth trying if you havent already.