so ive been working on my morse code for about 3 months now and im completely stuck at around 5wpm. i can copy most of what i hear if someone sends really slowly but the moment it picks up even a little bit i fall apart and start missing letters and then i panic and miss even more. its like a snowball effect going in the wrong direction.

ive been using the morse code trainer app on my phone and just doing random letters, also tried some of the lcwo.net lessons which are good but im not sure if im doing it the right way. i read somewhere that you should learn at higher character speeds like 20wpm but listen at slower effective speeds (farnsworth method i think?) but honestly i dont fully understand how that helps because the letters still sound different to me at higher pitch vs slower

anyone gone through this and actually gotten to 20wpm? how long did it take and what actually worked for you? i really want to get on the air with CW before the end of the year

yeah the Farnsworth thing confused me too at first but stick with it, it really does work. the idea is your brain learns the rhythm of each character at the speed you'll eventually use, so when you finally close the gap between character speed and word speed your ear already knows what an E or a T sounds like at 20wpm. if you learn at true 5wpm the characters themselves sound totally different and you basically have to relearn everything later.

what really pushed me over the plateau was just getting on the air honestly. like even just listening to slow net frequencies or the W1AW code practice transmissions. there's something about real signals in real conditions, QRM and fading and all that, that practice apps just cant replicate. also try copying call signs from DX clusters and see if you can pull them out when you tune around. low pressure way to practice for real.

took me about 8 months to go from basically zero to solid 15wpm copy, another few months to feel comfortable at 20. dont rush it, it clicks when it clicks

im in almost the exact same boat as you so hopefully someone gives a good answer haha. ive been at like 6-7wpm for two months and it feels like a wall. one thing that helped me a tiny bit was switching from random letters to actual words because your brain starts to recognize common patterns like "the" or "and" without decoding each letter individually. still slow going though