so ive been a tech for about two years and just upgraded to general last month, and i finally decided to take the plunge on CW. i know its not required anymore but honestly theres something about it that just drew me in, maybe all the old timers at the club who still swear by it.

anyway i picked up a cheap single lever paddle from amazon (i know, i know) and im using it with an old MFJ keyer i borrowed from a guy at my club. ive been practicing with the Koch method on lcwo.net for a few weeks and i can copy maybe 8-10 wpm on a good day. the problem is my sending is kind of a mess. like when im actually trying to use the paddle and form letters it just feels awkward and my spacing is all over the place. dits and dahs come out wrong sometimes and i cant tell if its my technique or if the single lever is just harder to learn on than a dual lever iambic paddle. anyone go through this? does it get better or am i building bad habits right now

yeah it absolutely gets better, dont worry too much at this stage. the spacing thing is super common early on, your brain is still working overtime just trying to remember the characters so your hands dont get the attention they need. i was the same way for the first couple months.

one thing that helped me a lot was slowing the keyer way down, like uncomfortably slow, and just focusing on clean rhythm rather than speed. you can always bump it up later but if you build sloppy habits at higher speeds theyre really hard to unlearn. also the single lever vs iambic thing is kind of personal preference but id say stick with what you have for now and get comfortable before switching. swapping paddle types mid-learning just resets everything. lots of good ops run single lever their whole lives, theres nothing wrong with it. keep at it and get on the air even if you feel like youre not ready, making actual QSOs is the best teacher by far.

im kind of in the same boat as you, been doing lcwo for about 6 weeks now. one thing that suprised me is how different copying on the air sounds vs the practice audio on the computer. like real signals have QSB and interference and stuff. made my first CW contact last week and i totally froze lol, but the other guy was super patient and we got through it. just wanted to say youre not alone in finding this hard