so ive been dabbling in CW for about 6 months now and i passed my general last spring, been practicing with the G4FON trainer and honestly my receiving is getting pretty decent at like 15-18 wpm but my sending is where i keep running into trouble. i have a set of Vibroplex paddles that i picked up used and they feel pretty nice but the timing on my keyer just feels off somehow. like the dits and dahs dont feel evenly weighted if that makes sense. i'm using the internal keyer on my IC-7300.

ive messed with the weight adjustment a little but im not sure if thats actually what i should be tweaking or if its something with my paddle tension or maybe just my technique. when i listen back to recordings of myself sending it sounds a little choppy in places and some of my letters are blending together. anyone dealt with this before? is there a good starting point for keyer settings i should be working from before i start chasing individual adjustments

yeah the 7300's built in keyer is actually pretty good, the issue you're describing is almost always paddle gap first, weight second. the gap between the contacts on those Vibroplex paddles — if it's too tight you're getting accidental closures, too loose and you're having to really squeeze which throws off your rhythm. i'd start there honestly. a business card thickness is the old rule of thumb for gap but really just experiment until the paddle feels like it's responding to the lightest touch without false triggering.

once the gap feels right then mess with the speed and weight. on the 7300 the weight control is under the keyer menu, default is 50 which is supposed to be 1:3 ratio but a lot of people bump it up just slightly, like 52 or 53, and it cleans things up noticeably. the choppy letters thing is probably a combination of the gap issue and just muscle memory still catching up — at 6 months in honestly you're doing fine, it just takes a while before your hand stops thinking about it

oh man i went through this exact thing not that long ago. for me it turned out i was gripping the paddle too tight when i got nervous or concentrated too hard, which sounds dumb but it was totally wrecking my timing. someone here told me to practice sending at a speed that felt almost too slow and just focus on relaxing my hand and it genuinely helped a lot more than tweaking settings did. like settings matter but if your hand is tense the keyer cant really save you lol