so ive been at this for about three weeks now, got myself a cheap single lever paddle off ebay and hooked it up to an old MFJ keyer i borrowed from a club member. practicing maybe 20-30 minutes a day with the koch method on LCWO dot net.

my receiving is actually coming along okay, im up to like 12 wpm on letters but my sending is a mess. the characters sound uneven, sometimes my dits run together or i get a weird extra space in the middle of a word. i dont know if its my paddle technique or if im fighting the keyer settings or both. the guy who lent me the keyer said the weight and speed were already set for him so maybe thats part of it.

is this just something you have to grind through or is there something specific i should be checking? i really dont want to build bad habits this early.

yeah that sounds completely normal for three weeks in, honestly. the uneven spacing thing is almost always a combination of tension and timing - your hand hasnt built the muscle memory yet and youre probably tensing up when you concentrate.

first thing id do is dial the keyer speed down to whatever feels almost too slow, like 10 or even 8 wpm, and just send random letters without thinking about whether theyre right. the goal at that stage is relaxing your grip not accuracy. also check the dit/dah ratio setting on the MFJ if it has one, sometimes they ship with the weight slightly off and it makes everything feel mushy.

single lever paddles can also be a little unforgiving when youre learning. not saying you need different gear but some folks find it easier to start on a straight key just to get the rhythm in their head before moving to iambic. either way dont stress too much, three weeks is nothing in CW terms.

im in almost the exact same spot as you, been going about 6 weeks. what helped me a ton was actually recording myself with Audacity and listening back - i had no idea how bad some of my E's and T's sounded until i heard them. its kind of painful to listen to but you catch stuff your ear misses in the moment.

also someone in my club told me to practice sending with my eyes closed which sounds weird but it actually made me focus more on feel than watching my hand.