I am interested in getting better at code. Much like in my school days I tend to cram my practice into the last few days before an event. I found that my comprehension of contest type exchanges improved during the last Winter Field Day. My keying with either a straight key or a paddle needs work and I am hesitant to expose this to actual amateur radio operators on the air. 

I need to know that I am going to have to communicate with someone before I am compelled to practice.

I have found a couple of helpful internet resources.

One is CW Communicator or CWCom, written by a now deceased Australian Ham and now being championed by an English non-ham who learned Morse Code in the Royal Navy some decades ago. I have been using this on and off since 2003 or before. There is a program to download, which allows practicing, and there is facility to connect to a website called morsecode.dyndns.org on one of many "frequencies". Some frequencies

will send world newspaper headlines at designated speeds. On others, hams and other interested people hang out, join and have cw conversations. For more see https://morsepower.blogspot.com/ .

Another application written since then is VBand. It is entirely web based. It contains a practice channel and a few communications channels. See https://hamradio.solutions/vband/ . It also translates your code as you go so mistakes show up relatively early. I sometimes call  it up to check what a particular Morse pattern is.

Both of these applications require some kind of interface between your key or paddle and your computer. I broke apart a mouse and attached a stereo jack to plug into. Unfortunately CWCom and VBand use different leads for (I think) dashes.

I hope this is helpful. I know it is pretty long.

John Allen

VA6SJA