so ive been a ham for about 8 months now (technician, just upgraded to general last month) and i keep reading that i should learn morse code even though its not required anymore. everyone in my local club seems to think its this big deal and a few of the older guys basically implied i wasnt a real ham until i could do CW which kind of annoyed me but also made me curious i guess.

anyway i downloaded like three different apps and i dont really know which one to use or where to start. someone mentioned something called the koch method? and also farnsworth? i dont really understand the difference. i just want to be able to do like basic QSOs eventually, im not trying to win contests or anything. do i just sit there and listen to beeps until my brain figures it out or what

the Koch method is what most people recommend now and honestly its what clicked for me after years of trying the old way. basically you start by learning just two characters at full speed -- like 20wpm -- until you can copy them accurately, then you add a third, then a fourth, and so on. the idea is your brain learns to recognize the sound as a whole instead of counting dits and dahs which is the trap everybody falls into.

Farnsworth is a little different, thats where the individual characters are sent at higher speed but theres extra space between them so you have more time to think. some people combine both approaches. LCWO dot net is free and a lot of people swear by it, thats where i actually got my characters down to the point where i could use them on air. also just...listen to actual QSOs on 40 or 20 meters, even if you cant copy anything yet. your ear starts to get used to the rhythm of real operating which is different from just doing drills.

dont worry about what the old timers say, learn it because you want to, it really does open up a different part of the bands once it clicks

im kind of in the same boat as you, been at it for maybe 3 months and its slow going ngl. i use the Morse Mania app and also Just Learn Morse Code on my laptop. the thing that helped me more than anything was just doing like 10-15 minutes every single day instead of doing an hour on the weekend. consistency really does matter more than how long each session is i think.

also there are some youtube videos with practice sessions at slow speeds which helped me when the apps felt too abstract or whatever. i can copy my callsign and a few common abbreviations now so thats something i guess