The Koch Method for Morse Code: A Step-by-Step Training Plan

The Koch method teaches Morse code by ear at full character speed from the first lesson. You start with just two characters, copy random groups of them until you get at least 90% right, then add one new character and repeat until you know the whole set. The speed of each character never drops; only the number of characters grows. This guide gives you the complete plan: the settings, the lesson loop, a common character order, an example schedule and the mistakes that slow people down.

What the Koch method is

Most people who try to learn Morse from a chart do the opposite of Koch. They memorise every character as a picture of dots and dashes, listen to them sent slowly, and try to speed up later. The Koch method fixes two things instead:

1. The character speed is fixed and fast. Every character sounds the way it will at a useful operating speed, so you learn its rhythm once and never have to relearn it.
2. The set is small and grows one character at a time. You only ever face characters you know plus one newcomer, so full speed stays manageable.

Everything else in the method follows from those two rules: the 90% threshold decides when the set grows, random groups make sure you are recognising sounds rather than predicting them, and short daily sessions keep the progress steady.

Where the method comes from

Ludwig Koch, a German researcher in industrial psychology at the Technische Hochschule Braunschweig, published his study of how radio operators receive Morse code in February 1936. It appeared in the journal Zeitschrift für angewandte Psychologie und Charakterkunde and as a 70-page book the same year. His goal was to train commercial radio operators faster.

His tests on experienced operators, as summarised by William Pierpont (N0HFF) in The Art and Skill of Radio-Telegraphy, produced the findings the method is built on:

• Operators recognise whole sound patterns, not dots and dashes. Characters were heard as single acoustic shapes only above roughly 50 characters per minute (about 10 wpm). At 5 wpm the same experienced operators could hardly identify a character.
• Slow teaching creates a plateau. Learners taught slowly had to switch from assembling elements to hearing patterns, and stalled around 10 wpm while they did.
• Charts cost speed. One operator who had learned from a printed chart sent well-formed characters at low speed but could barely meet the minimum receiving requirement.
• One new character at a time works; separate groups do not. When Koch taught a group of all-dash characters and then a group of all-dot characters, students forgot the first group while learning the second. Adding single characters to the known set kept everything under review.
• About 12 wpm was a good starting speed. It sat far enough above the plateau for characters to sound whole, without overloading average students.

Koch’s classes learned the alphabet in roughly 12 to 14 hours of teaching, spread over half-hour lessons. Treat that as a historical result rather than a promise: the report gives few details about the students, the classes met for only two or three half-hour lessons a week, and it covered letters, not the digits and punctuation modern courses include.

Modern trainers keep Koch’s core and change the details. They usually use faster characters than 12 wpm, extend the course to 40 or more characters, and let you add extra spacing. Some teachers go further: the Long Island CW Club, for example, introduces characters individually rather than starting with a pair. The plan below uses the widely shared version of the method and flags where choices vary.

Choose your full character speed

“Full speed” in Koch training means the character speed: how fast the dots and dashes inside each character are sent. It is set once at the start and left alone for the whole course. Choose it before lesson 1, because changing it halfway means your ear has to relearn every rhythm.

If you have no strong reason to choose otherwise, start at 20 wpm. At that speed a dot lasts 60 ms, too short to count comfortably, which is the point. Our timing rules explain how the dot length follows from the wpm figure.

Whatever you pick, the rule is the same: when a lesson feels hard, you do not slow the characters. You repeat the lesson, or you add a little extra space between characters (more on that below).

The Koch lesson loop

Every lesson follows the same loop. You need a Koch trainer that sends random groups from a chosen number of characters; most free Koch trainers, including LCWO, work this way.

1. Set the character speed you chose above, and keep it fixed.
2. Select the lesson. Lesson 1 uses two characters. Each later lesson adds one.
3. Listen to about five minutes of random groups. Five-character groups are traditional; Koch used them with normal spacing between letters and a longer pause between groups.
4. Copy every character as it arrives. Write it or type it. If one does not come to you instantly, put a dot or a gap in its place and let it go. Koch told his students to do exactly this, so that puzzling over one sound never costs them the next.
5. Score the run. Count correct characters against the total sent, or let the trainer compare your copy.
6. Decide. At 90% or better, move to the next lesson. Below 90%, repeat the same lesson.
7. Start the next session with a short run of the lesson you just passed before trying the new one. Koch began every lesson period with a review of everything learned so far.

That is the whole method. The rest of this guide is about running the loop well: which order to add characters in, how long to practise, and what to do when a lesson will not budge.

A common Koch character order

Koch’s own teaching order included the German character CH and bears little resemblance to the orders used today. There is no single official sequence. Trainers publish their own, and the differences are real, so pick one course and stay with it until the end.

One widely used example is the order in the free Learn CW Online (LCWO) course, which its author took from the German Koch guide by DF2OK. Lesson 1 starts with K and M; each lesson adds the next character, 40 lessons in all:

Another widely published order, used in NW7US’s SuperMorse Koch guide, begins K M R S U A P T L O W I and adds punctuation and digits in a different sequence. Other trainers differ again. None of them is wrong, and the idea behind most of them is the same: open with characters that sound clearly different, and bring in close sound-alikes once you have a base to contrast them with.

That design follows Koch’s own advice to begin with sound patterns that are distinctly different. -.- (dah-di-dah) and -- (dah-dah) are easy to tell apart even at 20 wpm. Koch found that learners could separate a similar series such as E, I, S and H in a first lesson, but the concentration it demanded worked against them.

Try the first characters

The trainer below plays single characters from the first six of the LCWO order, K M U R E S, and scores each answer. Use it for a quick recognition check between group-copy sessions, not as a replacement for them. Six characters make a check with enough variety to be worth scoring; with only two, a short run tells you little. Once your lessons cover all 26 letters, switch the practice set to Letters A-Z for a full-alphabet check.

Keep the character speed at the value you chose for your course, answer as soon as each sound ends, and type a full stop if a character does not come to you. The trainer counts it as a miss and moves on, which mirrors the let-it-go habit from step 4 of the loop.

How long each session should be

Koch tested lesson length directly. A half-hour lesson turned out to be about the useful maximum; even 45 minutes began to show diminishing returns, and he recommended two half-hour periods a day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. He also cited research showing that the same number of lessons spread over more days was far more effective than cramming them together.

Modern self-study usually works in shorter blocks built from the five-minute runs described above:

• One run: about five minutes of random groups, then scoring.
• One session: a review run of the previous lesson plus two or three runs of the current lesson, roughly 15 to 25 minutes.
• One day: one or two sessions, ideally several hours apart.

Stop a session when your score drops on two runs in a row. That is usually fatigue rather than a lack of ability, and practising tired only rehearses errors. Practising most days matters more than practising long: a short session every day beats a long one at the weekend.

An example training schedule

The table below turns the LCWO order into five phases. It is an example to adapt, not a timetable: the checkpoint, not the calendar, decides when you move on.

Expect the pace to vary. Early lessons can pass in a single session, while a lesson that introduces a character close to one you already know can take several days. In this order, for example, H arrives after S and 5, which differ from it by a single dot, so lesson 28 may take longer than the lessons around it. A stall of a session or two is normal; Koch’s own classes showed short plateaus that generally lasted no more than one lesson period.

When to increase difficulty

There are three ways to make Koch training harder, and they belong in a fixed order.

1. Add a character when you score 90% or better on the current lesson. If you want protection against a lucky run, require 90% on two runs in a row. Do not wait for 100%: the remaining errors shrink as later lessons keep reviewing the same characters.
2. Remove extra spacing once the full set is learned, if you used any. Close the gap between effective speed and character speed in small steps until you copy groups at standard spacing.
3. Raise the character speed only after that, in steps of a few wpm. Each rise makes familiar characters sound slightly different, so expect a dip and treat it like a new lesson: repeat until you are back above 90%.

If a lesson will not pass after several sessions, find out which character is failing before changing anything. Usually it is the newcomer being confused with an older character. Give it extra listening, consider a little more spacing for a few days, and keep the character speed where it is.

Once you finish the course, the work changes from learning characters to using them. Our Morse code practice guide has scored drills for letters, numbers, mixed sets and words, with a ladder for raising speed, and our guide to decoding Morse code by ear covers head copy and how to recover from missed characters in real text.

Koch and Farnsworth: how they fit together

The two methods answer different questions, which is why they combine so easily.

• Koch decides what you learn and when. It controls the size of the character set and the rule for growing it.
• Farnsworth decides how much silence surrounds each character. It sends characters at full speed but stretches the gaps between them, so the overall speed is lower than the character speed.

Koch himself did not stretch the spacing. His students copied five-letter groups with normal gaps between letters and a longer pause only between groups. He warned that long pauses invite the learner to think about the sound, guess what comes next or translate it into a picture, all habits that break down as speed rises.

Many modern Koch trainers let you add Farnsworth-style spacing anyway, through a setting usually labelled effective speed. Used sparingly, it gives a beginner breathing room in the first lessons. Used heavily, it drifts back toward the problem Koch identified. A practical rule: use the least extra spacing that lets you pass lessons, and remove it before you raise the character speed. The mechanics of Farnsworth timing are covered in our timing section.

Koch vs memorising dots and dashes

Memorising a chart is a common alternative, and it can feel faster on day one because all 26 letters are “learned” in an afternoon. The cost arrives later.

Koch’s recommendation was that learners should not see characters in any visual form at all, because a visual impression is strong enough to pull the ear back into analysing dots and dashes. If you have already memorised a chart, you have not ruined anything. Start the Koch course anyway, and when a character arrives, resist picturing it; the sound takes over with practice.

Memory aids are a related shortcut with the same trade-off. Our Morse code mnemonics guide explains when they help and when to drop them. The Koch method is also step 2 of the homepage study plan, which places it alongside sending practice and daily decoding.

Common Koch method mistakes

• Slowing the characters to pass a lesson. It turns a Koch course back into a slow-code course. Repeat the lesson instead.
• Looking up a new character before hearing it. Let the trainer introduce it by sound; check the written form afterwards if you must.
• Moving on too early, or too late. 70 or 80% means the set is not yet automatic; insisting on 100% wastes sessions that later lessons would review anyway.
• Switching trainers mid-course. Different courses add characters in different orders, so switching can skip some characters and repeat others. LCWO users have reported exactly this confusion. Finish one course first.
• Cramming. One long weekend session does less than the same minutes spread across the week.
• Skipping the review run. Starting each session with the previous lesson keeps older characters sharp.
• Leaving extra spacing on permanently. Wide gaps are a crutch for early lessons, not a final setting.
• Stopping at the letters. Digits and punctuation are part of the course, and callsigns you hear on the air contain digits.