so ive been a tech for about 3 years and just got my general last month, and everyone keeps telling me i need to learn CW even though its not required anymore. i kind of resisted it for a while but honestly after listening to the low end of 40m late at night i kind of get it now. there's something about it that just sounds cool.

anyway i picked up a cheap single lever paddle off ebay, nothing fancy, and i'm running it into an old MFJ keyer i borrowed from a guy at my club. the keyer works fine i think but my dits and dahs are coming out really uneven. like sometimes ill squeeze a character and it comes out perfect and then the next one is all mushy. i've been practicing with the keyer set around 12 wpm which someone told me was a good starting speed but i honestly cant tell if the problem is the paddle tension, my technique, or just that im new and my hands dont know what theyre doing yet.

is there like a common beginner mistake with iambic paddles im probably making? i tried watching some youtube videos but most of them either go too fast or assume you already kind of know what youre doing. any advice appreciated, even if its just 'keep practicing dummy'

ha, welcome to the rabbit hole. honestly what you're describing sounds pretty normal for someone just starting with an iambic paddle. the mushy characters are almost always tension and/or gap adjustment on the paddle itself — if the contacts are set too close the keyer is seeing ghost closures you didn't intend. try backing the contact gap out just a tiny bit and see if it cleans up. also 12 wpm is fine but some people actually find it easier to start higher like 15-18 wpm with longer word spacing, the Koch method and stuff like that. your brain starts recognizing sounds instead of counting dots.

the other thing i'd say is dont fight the iambic thing right away. a lot of people starting out actually do better on a single lever or even a straight key just to get the rhythm before adding the squeeze keying complexity. nothing wrong with single lever for years honestly, plenty of great ops use them exclusively.

im in pretty much the same boat, got my general in the spring and just started messing with CW a few weeks ago. what helped me a lot was just running the keyer into a practice oscillator and not even worrying about getting on the air yet. theres a free program called Just Learn Morse Code or you can use the LCWO website, i use that one almost every day now even just for like 10 minutes. the sending will come with time i think but my receiving is honestly worse than my sending lol so maybe focus on that too