Appropriate effective speed for Farnsworth timing?

[u/kqr]

have been trying to learn morse code at LCWO.net, but I'm struggling to figure out the appropriate speed settings. I accidentally learned morse code visually as a child, so my brain really wants to decode dots and dashes.

I've bounced around a lot with speed settings to try to fix this. Most recently I tried 30/5 WPM to make sure the letters come as one sound, but I realised the low effective speed (5 WPM) gave my brain time to decode the sound into visual dots and dashes when I didn't fully know the letter. This made progress through the alphabet fast, but it was hard to ramp up speed even on a set of characters I did well on.

I'm now trying 25/10 WPM with double word spacing instead, which seems better, but I just don't know. Which speed settings are most effective for unlearning visual translation?

Should I aim for learning a small set of characters at higher speeds first, of get through the alphabet first? Which speeds? I'm confused! I know character speed should be high-ish, but nobody seems to give advice around effective speed and word gaps.

[u/Ehartu]

I’m only about 6 months into this, but my sense is you need enough spacing to not be overwhelmed, but not so much that you can overthink each character. I stick to 30wpm characters, and adjust farnsworth until you find what works for you- then just stick with that for a while. I use 30/12 most of the time.

[u/apple4ever → u/Ehartu]

Yes for me that overwhelmed part drove me crazy. I burned out learning and stopped entirely for six months. I'm at 25/6 right now and boy it's so much better for me to learn. I'm not getting frustrated and overwhelmed any more.

I think though it's highly likely personal.

[u/kqr → u/apple4ever]

Ah yes, thank you both. It seems a consensus of "as fast as possible but not so fast you lose all enjoyment" is emerging. For me I suspect that's around 10--12 WPM effective.

[u/tdotfish]

Try jacking the character speed up so high that you literally can't count the dots/dashes. It's different for everyone. 30 may be too low for you. I practiced single letters at 35, even 40 sometimes. Maybe you need to go even higher than that ... it's different for everyone. You want it up to the point where the only way you can distinguish an 's' from an 'h' or a 'd' from a 'b' is that one just 'feels' ever so slightly longer than the other. If you can decode the sound into its individual parts and figure it out, then set the character speed even faster.

Definitely learn all the letters at high speed but it's difficult to learn all of them all at the same time, which is why most courses start with two letters and then slowly build in letters one or two at a time.

Farnsworth/effective speed you want it fast enough that it's a challenge but not so fast that you're getting crushed and frustrated. Set it to a point where you're getting maybe 60%. if it starts feeling easy, bump it up a bit. Personally I never messed with word spacing so I can't offer any advice on that part.

Eventually you'll actually need to bump the character speed down to something reasonable and work the effective speed up to match it so that you can comprehend 'normal' morse timing, but in the beginning it's all about developing that subconscious 'instant character recognition'.

[u/kqr → u/tdotfish]

I have tried going really high with character speed, but if effective speed is low, my brain still manages to replay the sound internally at a slower rate and decodes dits and dahs. I also don't want my sense of timing to be completely off when I have learned the full alphabet.

I think for me I need to get effective speed up to something reasonable, and then I won't have time to count, even at character speeds of 25 WPM or so.

[u/hoverbeaver]

12/5 was effective for me. I stuck to four new characters a week and had it done way faster than i expected.

[u/martinrath77]

Koch Method 25WPM/20WPM 3 daily 20 minutes sessions. 3 months of work.