Initially, I didn’t have any interest in CW. My initial interests were digi modes such as FT8/JS8 but when I learned how small and portable CW radio gear could be allowing me to always have a radio with me and take advantage of a free 20-30 minutes to play radio, I couldn’t resist.

DISCLAIMER: This is my experience based on my strengths and weaknesses so YMMV. I am always interested in how it compares to others learning (or struggling) CW. Please provide any feedback via email to [email protected]

TLDR: Keep trying. Trying different tools/approaches.

  1. Self study with apps like Morse Mania and LCWO
  2. Enrolled in CW Ops Academy. I was able to guess my way into the Intermediate class but I should have started in the fundamental class. Regardless, the intermediate class was good for me and I learned some hard lessons but I will take the class again and definitely benefitted from the advisor requiring input on practice results before each class. Our advisor, Bob Carter WR7Q, was great about asking for homework updates but not shaming you if didn’t submit. He found the balance of understanding life happens and holding you accountable.

One thing I learned (the hard way), is to start with your character speed high (i.e. 25wpm or 20wpm at a minimum) so you learn the sound of the letters once or twice instead of at each speed as you progress. Increase the Farnsworth spacing between the letters to give yourself more time until you reach instant character recognition (ICR). I knew about the dangers of counting dits and dahs increased my character speed to 15wpm but I should have gone higher. I also tend to doubt my memory/interpretation so I would overthink some characters. Once I let go and just made my best guess and moved, it helped.

My biggest mistake was not focusing on ICR. Instead I used all of the recommended tools and tried to brute force the learning but I couldn’t keep up and I spent so much cognitive effort decoding the individual letters that missed the larger word or message. When I started to focus on ICR using LCWO, I began with a small custom character set of letters which tripped me up and increased group size and character set size as my proficiency grew and my error rates dropped. This helped with mental fatigue. I found when using LCWO code groups with the whole alphabet, I could only do 1 minute without needing a break. Once I reduced the character set to a subset and focused on ICR, I could perform longer sessions without the fatigue.