so ive been doing CW for about 8 months now and i can copy maybe 15-16 wpm on a good day but my sending still feels really choppy and uneven. im using an old Bencher BY-1 paddle i picked up at a hamfest and a Winkeyer USB for the keyer logic. the weight and ratio controls on the Winkeyer confuse me honestly, i've messed with them but cant tell if im making things better or worse.

my elmer keeps telling me my dits are too short but when i slow down to fix it everything falls apart and i lose the rhythm entirely. does this get better just from practice or is there something specific i should be working on? also is the Bencher a decent paddle to learn on or should i look at something else eventually. i dont want to keep building bad habits

the timing thing is super common and yeah it does get better but there's a trick that helped me a lot -- set your weight just slightly heavier than default, like bump it up a little so the dits get a hair more space. dont go crazy with it, just enough that you can hear each element cleanly. the Bencher BY-1 is honestly a fine paddle, thats what i learned on too and i still use mine for portable ops. its not fancy but its solid.

one thing that really helped my sending was copying my own transmissions back through a receiver and just listening critically. you start hearing things you never noticed. also try slowing down to like 10 wpm but using PARIS as your word spacing standard so the characters themselves sound right even at slow speed. the character speed vs word speed thing, some people call it Farnsworth method, made a huge difference for me when i was learning. dont ditch the Bencher, just spend more time with it.

im in a pretty similar boat so i cant offer expert advice but i will say the Winkeyer ratio control messed with my head for weeks. i just ended up resetting everything to defaults and leaving it alone until my sending felt more natural, then i started tweaking. maybe try that? sometimes less fiddling is better when you're still building muscle memory i think