so ive been doing morse code practice for about 3 months now and im sitting at maybe 7-8wpm on a good day. when i first started i was using the ARRL beginner stuff and a few apps on my phone but honestly i feel like im just spinning my wheels lately. i can copy most characters fine when theyre sent slow but as soon as i try to bump the speed up even a little everything falls apart and i get frustrated and go back down again.

my goal is to get to 20wpm eventually. not in any huge rush but i do want to actually USE cw on the air someday. ive heard about the Koch method and farnsworth timing and i sort of understand the concept but im not sure im doing it right. like right now i practice maybe 20-30 minutes a day, sometimes less if work is crazy. is that enough? and how long did it realistically take you to get to a point where you could have an actual qso at decent speed? not looking for a magic answer just curious what other peoples experience was like

honest answer? it took me almost two years to get comfortable at 20wpm, but i wasnt being consistent about it either. id practice for a few weeks, get busy, stop for a month, start over basically from scratch. the guys i know who got there faster were the ones who did a little bit every single day instead of marathon sessions on weekends.

the farnsworth thing is real though - if youre not using it you should be. the idea is you learn each character at full speed (like 20wpm character spacing) but with longer gaps between them so you have time to think. that way your brain learns the rhythm of each character at real speed instead of learning it slow and then having to unlearn it. LCWO dot net has a good implementation of this if you havent tried it. also dont underestimate just listening to real qsos on the air, even if you cant copy everything yet. tune around 7.050 or so in the evenings and just let it wash over you.

im kind of in the same boat as you so take this with a grain of salt lol but one thing that actually helped me was switching from copying by writing everything down to just listening and not worrying about getting every character. like i was spending so much mental energy trying to write fast enough that i was missing the next letter. someone on here told me to try just listening for a while and it weirdly helped my brain stop panicking. still working on it myself but im up to about 12wpm now after maybe 6 months so i think youre doing alright honestly