so ive been trying to get more serious about CW for the past few months and overall its going pretty well, im up to maybe 12-13 wpm copying and can send a bit faster than that but here's the thing thats been driving me crazy — my keyer just randomly starts sending like the dits and dahs are squished together or the spacing goes off and i cant figure out if its me or the keyer itself.

im using a cheap paddle i picked up at a hamfest, not sure of the brand honestly it didnt have any markings on it, plugged into an old MFJ keyer my elmer gave me. the contacts seem clean, i adjusted the gap a couple times. sometimes ill be sending along fine and then a whole word just comes out as garbage. my elmer said maybe its a contact tension thing but i dunno.

also separate question kind of — any tips for building up speed? im working through the LCWO site which i like but feel like im plateauing a bit around 12-13. read somewhere that you should just jump up to a higher speed and kind of let your brain catch up, does that actually work or is it just one of those things people say

the squished characters thing sounds like contact bounce to me, especially if the paddle is a no-name unit from a hamfest. cheap paddles sometimes have contacts that dont make a clean single connection — they bounce just enough to throw the keyer timing off. try cleaning the contacts with some deoxit or even a piece of plain paper pulled through slowly, and then really carefully reset the tension. too loose and you get bounce, too tight and your hand tires out quick.

also check the keyer speed setting isnt drifting — some of those older MFJ units have a pot that gets scratchy over time, so the speed can wander a bit if the pot isnt making good contact. try rotating it back and forth a bunch of times to clean it out.

as for building speed — yeah the jump ahead method actually does work, at least it did for me. the idea is your brain starts recognizing the sound of the whole character instead of counting elements. i went from plateauing at 15 to eventually getting comfortable around 22 just by forcing myself to copy 20 and accepting i'd miss a lot at first. dont try to write every character, just copy what you can and let the rest go by. took a few weeks but it clicked eventually.

im in almost the exact same boat lol, 14 wpm here and feels like a wall. ive heard the Koch method is good but i keep jumping around between different practice tools and probably not helping myself by doing that. curious what other people think about those straight key vs paddle arguments too — my uncle who got me into ham radio swears a straight key first builds better rhythm but idk seems old fashioned maybe