so ive been trying to learn CW for about three months now and i finally broke down and bought a decent dual lever paddle last week. been using one of those cheap single lever things that came with a kit and i think it was actually making things worse for me honestly. anyway the new paddle feels way nicer but im still having trouble with my timing, like my dits and dahs are coming out kind of mushy sometimes, especially when i try to speed up past maybe 13 wpm or so.

im using an old MFJ keyer that i borrowed from a buddy and i think the squeeze keyer mode is confusing my fingers more than helping right now. somebody at the club told me to just turn off iambic mode and treat it like a single lever for a while until my muscle memory catches up. is that actually good advice or am i gonna have to unlearn it later? i really want to get on the air but i dont want to build bad habits. any of you go through this when you were learning?

yeah that advice about turning off iambic for a while is pretty solid actually, at least for building your basic muscle memory. i did the same thing when i was learning, spent probably two months just doing straight key before i even touched a paddle, which some people think is old fashioned but i dont regret it at all. the squeeze keying thing will click eventually, you just dont want to be fighting two learning curves at once if you can help it.

one thing that really helped me with timing was slowing way back down and using something like the Koch method if you havent already, like go back to 8 or 9 wpm and really nail clean characters before creeping the speed back up. also check your paddle tension and gap settings, sometimes a little adjustment makes a huge difference, too loose and you get accidental contacts, too tight and your hand cramps up after a few minutes. takes some fiddling to find the sweet spot for your particular hands.

im kind of in the same boat as you so take this with a grain of salt but i switched to straight key practice on jscwlib in the evenings and it actually helped my paddle sending weirdly enough. also i found that just copying code off the air even when i cant decode most of it helps my ear get used to the rhythm. W1AW still does code practice sessions and theres a schedule on the ARRL site.