so ive been licensed about 8 months now and finally decided to really commit to learning CW. im using a cheap set of paddles i picked up off ebay and a MFJ keyer built into my radio (IC-7300). i can receive okay at like 12-13 wpm if the sending is clean but my own sending is all over the place. sometimes my dits and dahs sound fine and then i'll hit a rough patch and it just sounds like mush.

i read somewhere that you should set the keyer speed a bit faster than you're comfortable with to force yourself to learn the rhythm but honestly that just made things worse for me. been practicing with the paddles every night for maybe 20 minutes but im not sure im building good habits or bad ones. anyone been through this and come out the other side?

yeah the 'set it faster' advice can really backfire if you havent got the basic muscle memory down yet. what worked for me back when i was learning was actually slowing way down and just sending individual characters over and over until they felt automatic — not thinking about dots and dashes at all, just the sound. Koch method kind of thing.

also check your paddle tension and spacing. if the gap between the contacts is off it makes consistent sending really hard. took me forever to figure out that my cheap paddle was basically working against me because the contacts were so light that i was triggering accidental dits constantly. eventually i saved up for a decent set of Begali paddles and it was like night and day, but honestly even adjusting the tension and gap on a cheap set can help a lot before you spend money.

dont give up, 8 months in is still early days for CW. most guys i know took a solid year before their sending felt natural.

I'm kind of in the same boat so following this thread. One thing that helped me a little was recording myself and playing it back — hearing your own sending is kind of painful at first but you immediately hear where your spacing is falling apart. I use just a free audio recorder on my phone patched into the sidetone output.

Also someone on another forum mentioned that 20 minutes a day is actually fine but it needs to be focused practice not just randomly sending stuff. Like actually sending real words and QSO exchanges rather than just the alphabet over and over. Havent fully tried that yet but it makes sense to me.