so ive been licensed for about 8 months now, general class, mostly doing some HF SSB stuff but ive been really curious about CW. everyone seems to say its worth learning and i kind of want to try but i have no idea how to even approach it. like do you just memorize the dots and dashes on paper or is there software or what

i tried looking it up and theres a million different opinions. some guy on youtube was saying you should never learn the visual patterns and just go straight to sound, someone else said start with a chart. im confused honestly. also is there like a realistic timeline for getting to where you can actually make a contact, even a slow one. i dont need to be fast just want to actually use it at some point

the youtube guy is right, dont learn the dots and dashes visually, that route will slow you down later when you're trying to copy at any real speed. you want to hear the letters as sounds, like the letter R just sounds like a specific rhythm, not dot-dash-dot that you have to decode in your head. look up the Koch method, thats what most people recommend now. LCWO.net is free and its basically built around that approach, starts you with just K and M and adds letters as you get comfortable. it sounds slow but it works.

realistic timeline is really hard to say because it depends how much time you put in. i practiced maybe 15-20 minutes every day and it took me probably four or five months before i felt okay enough to try a QRS contact on 40m. some people do it faster. the main thing is consistency, even short sessions every day beats doing a long session once a week by a lot

im kind of in the same boat as you actually, been doing the LCWO thing for like 6 weeks now. its honestly kind of frustrating at first ngl, some letters just wouldnt stick for me (V was the worst for some reason). but then it just clicks one day and you stop thinking about it. also theres an app called Morse Mania that i use on my phone when im on the bus or whatever, its not perfect but its good for keeping the sounds fresh in your head when you dont have time to sit down at the computer. someone in another thread mentioned Ham Morse too but i havent tried that one yet