so ive been a tech for about 8 months now and i keep going back and forth on whether to bother with CW. i know you dont need it for the license anymore but i kind of want to learn it anyway, partly for the general upgrade but partly just because it seems cool and i hear people say its useful for weak signal stuff

the problem is i have no idea where to start. i downloaded some app a while back and it just showed me the dots and dashes visually and i tried to memorize them like a table but that felt totally wrong and i gave up after a week. is that even the right approach? someone at the club mentioned something called koch method but i dont really know what that is or how different it is from just learning the chart

basically what actually worked for you when you were starting out, and are there any specific apps or websites or whatever that are worth using. i can probably practice like 20-30 minutes a day if i actually have a good system to follow

yeah forget the dot dash chart thing, that really is the wrong way to go about it. you want to hear each letter as a sound, like a rhythm, not think "dit dah dah" in your head every time you hear an M. that mental translation step is what kills people

the Koch method is basically where you start with just 2 characters at full speed, like 20wpm or whatever, and you dont move on until you can copy them reliably, then you add one more character at a time. the idea is your brain learns the sounds rather than the symbols. LCWO.net is the site most people use for this, its free and its been around forever. some guys also swear by the Just Learn Morse Code software but i think LCWO does the same thing

the other thing id say is dont bother trying to write every character down when you're practicing, at least not obsessively. some people listen and just try to get their head around it first. and 20-30 minutes a day is honestly plenty if youre consistent, the consistency matters way more than long sessions

im kind of in the same boat as you actually, been doing LCWO for a few months now and im at like 17 characters so far. its slow going but it does feel like its working better than when i tried to memorize the chart. one thing that helped me was also listening to like morse code youtube videos while im driving or whatever, just ambient stuff, even if i cant copy it yet it sort of gets your ear used to the sounds

theres also an app called Morse Mania that some people on here recommended to me, its more gamified which can help if you get bored with just the LCWO drills. not sure its as systematic but its something to mix in maybe