so ive been at this for about three weeks now, got myself a cheap single lever paddle off ebay and been practicing with the keyer built into my old FT-857. i can copy about 10-12 wpm when im listening to practice files but the moment i try to actually send anything my timing goes all over the place and letters run together or there are huge gaps between elements. its embarrassing honestly.

i think part of the problem might be my paddle tension or maybe the gap adjustment? i dont really know where to start with that. or maybe im just squeezing too hard. someone at the club mentioned i should slow way down and just focus on clean characters before worrying about speed but i dont know if thats actually good advice or if i should try to stay closer to the speed im trying to receive at. any thoughts from people who have been through this would be really appreciated, starting to feel like im never gonna get this

the guy at your club is right, slow down. seriously. i know its not what you want to hear but sloppy fast code builds really bad habits that take forever to unlearn. there was a period where i thought i was making progress around 15 wpm and then hit this wall for like two years because my dits were mushy and i never noticed until someone recorded me and played it back. was humbling.

for the paddle adjustment, start with the contact gap just barely enough that you dont get false triggers when you rest your fingers on it. some people like more tension, some less, just gotta experiment but dont crank it way down thinking it'll help your speed. also try holding the paddle with your whole hand loose instead of pinching with just two fingers, that might help with the death grip problem. and yeah your keyer speed being set too high for where you actually are sending-wise is probably the main culprit, drop it down to like 8 or 9 wpm and just make clean letters, then bump it up a wpm at a time over weeks not days.

im in basically the same boat as you lol, been at it about two months. what helped me a lot was just getting on the air even when i felt totally unready. found the QRS frequencies and called CQ a few times and yeah people are slow with me and patient. hearing my actual callsign come back from somebody real was way more motivating than any software ever was. also the koch method if you havent tried it yet, theres a free program called lcwo dot net that a lot of people swear by