so ive been a ham for about 3 years now mostly doing SSB and some digital but i always wanted to learn CW properly. got myself a cheap iambic paddle off ebay and plugged it into the keyer built into my radio (ic-7300) and honestly the paddle itself feels okay but i cannot for the life of me get the dit/dah ratio feeling right. everything i send sounds either too rushed or i squeeze a dah and it spits out two extra dits i wasnt expecting.

ive been practicing with the keyer set around 15 wpm because i read somewhere you should learn at speed and then just slow down the character spacing (farnsworth method i think its called?) but im not sure if im even doing that right. been using the G4FON trainer on my laptop for receiving which seems decent. anyone have tips for getting the muscle memory down for sending? its like my thumb and finger dont talk to each other yet lol

also not sure if the paddle tension is part of the problem, it feels a little loose maybe. is there a sweet spot for that or is it just personal preference

the tension thing is totally personal but yeah a loose paddle will absolutely cause you to accidentally trigger extra elements especially when youre still building muscle memory. tighten it up just enough that you feel a little resistance before the contact closes — you dont want it flopping around. took me a while to figure that out with my first paddle.

for the iambic mode stuff, a lot of beginners actually do better starting in mode A instead of mode B. mode B on most rigs will insert an extra element at the end of a squeeze which can really mess with your head when youre learning. check your 7300 menu and see which iambic mode its set to, that might explain some of the weirdness youre hearing. also honestly dont stress too much about sounding perfect right now, just get on the air and try. people on the CW watering holes are generally pretty patient with slower ops

im kind of in the same boat as you, been at this for maybe 6 months now. one thing that helped me a ton was just recording myself sending and listening back. sounds painful but you hear mistakes you dont notice in real time. also i switched to a straight key for a few weeks just to get the rhythm of individual characters into my head before going back to the paddle. might not work for everyone but it clicked for me that way