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 to learn) CW. As part of this process. Please provide any feedback via email to [email protected]

Tenets That Worked For Me

  1. Start at a character speed fast enough to discourage dit/dah counting. It seems 20 words per minute is a common recommeded minimum speed.
  2. Learn from audio only. Learn what a character sounds like not looks like.
  3. Focus on ICR first.
  4. Don’t give up.

My Journey

2025/02/16 - Initial Content

  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.

2025/12/26 Updates - Life got in the way for awhile but I am back to learning CW. I am focused on ICR and need tools to learn wherever/whenever I have 5 free minutes. For phone apps, I started with Morse Mania and it was great for learning the letters but it didn’t seem to give me with repetition needed for ICR proficiency. I recently discovered Morse ICR by Jouni Erola. It provides the sheer repetiton and allows me practice for a few minute and put it down which seems to help me. Unfortunately the app crashes occasionally and doesn’t seem to be actively maintained but it is free and still provides significant value to me. I really like the approach Morse ICR takes with the minimal character speed offered to discourage counting dits/dahs and as each character is introduced, only audio is presented so you don’t have the visual representation to map to when you hear it. There is a different mental path for me for characters that I learned through Morse Mania (at slower speeds and with a visual reference) than characters which I learned via Morse ICR.

Resources

  1. Morse Mania - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/morse-mania-learn-morse-code/id1511042196 - iPhone and Android App

  2. Morse ICR - https://apps.apple.com/lv/app/morse-icr/id6736839333 - iPhone App

  3. Morse Runnner - https://dxatlas.com/MorseRunner/ - Windows executable - Contest simulator - Good for general QSOs and introducing QRM/QRN.