so ive been at this for about 4 months now and im stuck somewhere around 10-11wpm and it feels like the wall is real. started with the basics back in the spring, got through the alphabet pretty quick with some app called Morse Mania, and then jumped onto cwops stuff and some of the LCWO lessons. got comfortable enough at 5wpm that i passed my general (not that you need it anymore but still wanted it for my own satisfaction), now im trying to push up toward 20 because that seems to be where you can actually have a real QSO without it feeling like torture.

my main question is how long did it realistically take people to get to 20wpm where you felt comfortable just jumping into a pile or ragchewing on 40m. i keep reading people say stuff like "copy what you hear dont write it down" and im trying but my brain just freezes when i miss a character and then i miss the next 3 while i panic about the first one. does that get better on its own or is there something specific that helped break through it

also what speed do you set your practice tone at, ive been doing 15wpm character speed with 10wpm effective (farnsworth) and wondering if i should just rip off the bandaid and go full 15 effective

the panic thing when you miss a character -- yeah that never fully goes away but it does get way better. honestly the biggest thing that helped me was just forcing myself to let go of missed letters. like mentally just put a dot or a question mark in your head and keep moving. the word usually makes sense from context anyway and thats kind of the whole point of head copying, your brain fills in gaps way better than you'd think once you trust it.

as for the farnsworth thing, i'd say bump it up. i kept my character speed at 20 the whole time and just slowly raised the effective speed from like 8 up. took me probably 8 or 9 months total to feel genuinely comfortable ragchewing around 18-20wpm but i wasnt doing it every single day either. some guys get there faster. the ones who do usually just throw themselves on the air early, like way before they feel ready, and get beat up a little and it works. W1AW practice broadcasts are good too if you havent tried those, real on air signals just hit different than any app

im kind of in the same boat as you actually, been at it since january and just cracked 13wpm on LCWO last week which felt huge. what helped me recently was switching from copying letters to copying whole words and just accepting that im going to miss stuff. theres a site called morse.kjwenger.com or something like that with common word lists and i just run those over and over. also started just tuning around 40m in the evenings and copying whatever i can, even if its just call signs and signal reports, just to hear real operators and not a computer. feels more real somehow