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I try to learn CW but its very very difficult and what concentration is needed. INCREDIBLY !!

Im just at the second lesson, i start 3 day ago.

Speed : 20wPm
eff speed : 0

Stay focused without losing the thread for a minute, I have to robotize myself.

I'm going to move forward at a snail's pace, I can feel it.

My Paramaters are good ?

Hi.

I'm new as well, and I also feel that I'm learning slowly. If better advice comes, I won't be bothered if you listen to them instead of me. :)

I think your settings are probably good

Character Speed: 20 wpm
Effective Speed: 15 wpm
Extra Word Spacing: 0

The "Koch method CW course" here on this site seems like it's helping me learn. I struggle a little with the lessons because I get distracted trying to fix my mistakes but I think the MorseMachine is great.

Something I noticed later is the "Speed Practice" - "Word training". I didn't go there for a while because it seemed like it would be advanced. That was a mistake. If you can do "MorseMachine" up to lesson 9, you can start using the "Word training".

Hi,
20/0 It's possible to learn with this setting ?
I'm just afraid of making the setting too easy and causing me to develop bad habits.
Maybe an alternation?
I try to test the Morsemachaine for see what is.

George is correct 20x15 is the recommended setting. Advancing at this speed can certainly be slow. Just for context, it took me 1 year 10 months to learn all 40 characters at this speed. But once you conquer these characters you can start increasing speed to become even faster. Morse Machine is a fantastic tool, Word training is also great. Wish you both good luck in your CW journey, if I can be of any assistance and can help I certainly will. By no means am I an expert at CW but I have been where you currently are and I can attest to this method of learning working for me.

You may have heard about people learning morse in a couple of weeks - but these people are quite rare.

Morse is more difficult to learn fully, say head copying at 20/20, than is generally expected.

Some people take a year or more. It is do-able and well worth the effort IMNSHO (YMMV) , but it is not a trivial exercise.


For most people it is a new experience to be listening to dits and dahs; quite apart from associating them with letters, numbers and punctuation.

Get used to the noise and to listening to them.



Three days is a bit of a short time to be getting worried about progress.

Give it a month at least . . .



There are some common issues we see reported in the forum.


Not hearing it correctly - make sure you can easily distinguish between dits and dahs. Are your headphones suitable. Have you chosen an audi frequency your ears like. are distractions going on around you.

You may get fatigued if you are concentrating too hard. More 10 second exercises will probably be better than fewer 5 minute ones. Whatever you choose and however you spread throughout the day - try to do at least 15 mins of actual decoding daily if you can.


Are you relaxed but focused, or is your mind thinking about tomorrow's meetings etc. Don't forget to smile. Its a lot easier to learn more today than back when nonag was learning it . . .


Don't move on the the next exercise too quickly. You will learn by repetition and you need it to sink in properly - else about lesson 12 you may find you lost the first characters because they were in short term memory only.
i.e move on to slowly - waste a bit of time - move on to quickly = go back and finish properly.


If you can't already touch type then be careful of becoming keyboard bound
i.e. instead of hear-morse->character-pops-into-your-head-as-if-from-no-where you will have hear-morse->press-key and always need a keyboard.


Did you mean 20/10 ??


Whatever - try to get to the end of the 40 exercises focusing on accuracy not speed.


If you make up some mp3 or ogg files you can listen on your 'phone on the train/bus/plane.


You will pick up morse by decoding morse and repeating until it becomes an automatic reaction.


Enjoy, and good luck with it . . .

Let us know how you are getting on.

YMMV as ever

CB

Hi,
Although I haven’t finished yet, I’d like to share my experience with learning CW.

I started in January 2025 practicing with the IZ2UUF app. Progress was slow because there wasn’t a system to track my progress or ensure I was learning correctly. I reached lesson 20.

In March 2025, I registered on lcwo.net and decided to start again from the first lesson. I set the character speed to 25 WPM and the effective speed to 10 WPM (a recommendation from forum colleagues). Since I had already practiced quite a bit with the IZ2UUF app, I progressed quickly through the early lessons. However, as I advanced and more letters were added, it became increasingly difficult to maintain the pace.

I stopped at lesson 18 for three weeks because I couldn’t pass the necessary tests to move on. At that point, I changed my strategy: instead of directly practicing with the lessons, I began working intensively with MorseMachine, typing as fast as possible. I only moved on to the next lesson when I felt fully prepared to do so.

I’ve discovered that until you reach 10 WPM with MorseMachine, it’s difficult to pass the lesson tests. This study method is working well for me because, thanks to intense practice with MorseMachine, I’m learning the “music” of each character. I no longer have to mentally translate; I go straight from hearing the character to typing it without thinking. I practice constantly until I can type each character automatically. When I move on to the lessons, I make far fewer mistakes than before, when I didn’t use MorseMachine.

I know the lessons are more demanding in terms of time compared to MorseMachine, but I used to get very frustrated when I couldn’t “capture” characters because I hadn’t internalized their sound. Now, thanks to this new strategy, I’ve advanced to lesson 22. I continue using the IZ2UUF app as support, which allows me to practice on my mobile phone.

My effective speed is set to 10 WPM. I know it’s a very low number, but I need time to type each character. Starting from lesson 22, I’ve increased the speed to 27/11 WPM, and I’m still capturing the “music,” and I have more time to type the characters.

I should also mention, or at least this happens to me, that when starting each learning session, you need to "warm up" a bit: in the initial moments, there are doubts about many characters, but after the first few minutes, both your brain and fingers are fully engaged.

Nice to read. I did exactly the same. At a certain moment you will not need the MorseMachine anymore. It will take time. To learn morsecode is difficult and it takes a lot of time. Wishing you good luck and hope we can make a CW QSO on air some time in the future.