so ive been a tech for about three years and just upgraded to general last month, been wanting to learn CW for a while now just as a personal goal not because i need it or anything. picked up a used bencher paddle from a local ham at the club swap and borrowed a friends MFJ keyer to mess around with while i figure out what i actually want to buy.

question is what speed do you normally set the keyer when youre still learning? i started at like 10 wpm which felt okay but ive seen some people say to learn at faster speeds from the start using the farnsworth method or something like that where the characters are fast but theres extra space between them. tried bumping it up to 15 wpm character speed with longer gaps and it kind of helped but im second guessing myself. also the weight adjustment on the keyer - does that actually matter that much at low speeds or is it more of a thing for contesting?

any advice appreciated, im just puttering around on 40m listening and hoping to make my first CW qso sometime before the end of the year

Farnsworth is absolutely the way to go, you're on the right track. The idea is your brain learns to recognize the rhythm of each character as a whole sound rather than counting dots and dashes, and if you learn at 5 wpm you'll just end up counting and have to relearn everything later. I started at 13 wpm character speed with about 8 wpm effective and it clicked a lot faster than my first attempt years earlier where I tried to go slow on everything.

As for the weight adjustment, honestly at 10-15 wpm it's not going to make a huge difference but if the dashes are starting to sound mushy or the dots feel too light just tweak it until it sounds clean to your ear. Some guys are really fussy about it and others never touch it. I'd say get comfortable with the paddle feel first and worry about fine tuning later. The bencher is a solid paddle by the way, good choice for learning on.

im kind of in the same boat as you, been practicing with the G4FON trainer app on my laptop and its been really helpful for building up speed gradually. i think i was at like 12 wpm last week and just jumped to 14 and it hurts lol but in a good way if that makes sense. havent actually gotten on the air yet, the idea of a real qso is terrifying honestly. let me know how your first one goes