so ive been at CW for about four months now and im using a Bencher BY-1 paddle into a MFJ-464 keyer and overall its been great for learning but i keep running into this thing where if i try to push past maybe 18 wpm everything just starts mushing together. like the dits start sounding like dahs or i get extra characters that i didnt send. not sure if its a paddle tension issue or the keyer settings or honestly just my terrible technique.

i messed with the weight and ratio settings on the keyer a bit but i wasnt really sure what i was doing. someone at the club told me to try adjusting the contact gap on the paddle but it looked fine to me. is this just a practice problem or is there something i should actually be checking on the hardware side first before i blame my fist

honestly at four months and 18wpm youre not doing bad at all, but yeah theres a few things worth checking before you just grind through it. first thing id do is back off the contact spacing on the paddle — a lot of new guys set it too wide because it feels more forgiving but it actually fights you at higher speeds. you want just a tiny gap, like barely a business card thickness on each side. if its too wide youre working harder than you need to and your timing suffers.

the weight setting on the keyer is also worth playing with more systematically. try setting it to dead center (50%) and see how that feels, then nudge it a tiny bit toward heavier if your dits are still dropping. and honestly the MFJ-464 is fine but it can be a little quirky, mine had a slight issue with the iambic mode where it would occasionally add a phantom dit at the end of a squeeze. you might try switching it to mode A if youre in mode B or vice versa and see if that changes anything.

but mostly — slow back down and build clean. Koch method or just lots of plain QSOs at a comfortable speed, the fast stuff comes on its own when the muscle memory is there

same thing happened to me when i was learning, kept blaming my keyer and it turned out i was just squeezing the paddle way too hard. like a death grip. once i consciously relaxed my hand a lot of the timing problems just went away. took me a while to notice i was even doing it