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I've been studying/practicing CW for many months. Except for call signs and other collections of random letters or numbers, my copying is OK past 10wpm. So, tonight I found someone on 40M calling CW at my speed and decided to put him through busting my cherry. I think he said he was running only 10W and he was fading in and out, so copying was a struggle. What really suprised me was the trouble I had sending. It wasn't the Morse part, but just SLOWLY spelling a word in my head and not loosing my place and leaving out letters that was hard.
Congrats on your first CW QSO. I made my first in 1965 and have really enjoyed CW my whole ham life. The more Qs you make the better you will become. For starters, write out what you want to say and send while reading that text. It's not cheating! You'll have it made when you hear "di-dah" and immediately write (or think) "A". You will have eliminated the middle step of hearing "di-dah", thinking "that's di-dah and di-dah is A".
73,
K1AJ