ok so ive had my general for almost two years now and i keep telling myself im gonna actually learn CW properly but i never really committed to it. i can copy maybe 5wpm on a good day if the sending is clean and im not distracted but honestly that feels pretty useless for actually getting on the air and making contacts.

i want to get to like 20wpm eventually. not in a rush necessarily but i feel like i've been stuck at 5 forever and i dont even know if im practicing the right way. right now i mostly just do the lcwo.net lessons and sometimes listen to W1AW code practice but i find myself counting dits and dahs which i know is wrong but i cant seem to stop doing it.

is there a method that actually works for jumping from beginner speed to something useful? i heard the koch method is the way to go but im already past the character learning stage, i just need speed. does anyone have a routine that worked for them or am i just gonna have to grind through it slowly

the counting thing is the biggest trap and honestly the hardest habit to break but you absolutely have to ditch it if you want any real speed. what worked for me was forcing myself to listen at a speed where counting was physically impossible — like bump it up to 15 or 18wpm even if you can only catch maybe half of it at first. your brain starts learning the sounds as whole characters instead of math problems. farnsworth spacing is great for this, you can set the character speed high but leave extra space between them so you have time to write without slowing the actual tone patterns down.

i went from about 7wpm to copying 20wpm solid in probably 8 months doing maybe 20-30 minutes a day of focused practice. the W1AW sessions are great because its real morse from real people and the slight variations in sending help train your ear better than perfectly machine-generated code. just stick with it, the jump from 10 to 15 felt like climbing a wall and then one day it kind of clicked

yeah im kind of in the same boat as you lol, been sitting at like 8wpm for months. one thing that helped me a little was just listening to actual QSOs on 40m even when i cant copy most of it. you start picking out callsigns and common words like 73 and CQ and ur and stuff. its not really structured practice but it keeps it feeling like a real thing and not just an exercise if that makes sense