How to practice sending morse

It is July 2025 and I’ve been learning to read Morse for 11 months. On the lcwo website, I can manage 10 wpm in plain language on a good day, but I’ve been stuck on how to learn to send.

At one time, you could practice ‘off air’ with another ham at your local radio club, but this has limitations – not least as to when you can practice.

Websites

I’ve now come across https://hamradio.solutions/vband/

This is a website that lets you practice privately using your web-browser or you can create or join a ‘channel’ to communicate with another user or users, without a radio connection.  So you can set up with a friend to practice wherever and whenever convenient.

Dongle

You need a ‘dongle’ to connect your key (using a conventional jack plug) to the USB port of the computer and you can immediately connect to the practice channel, which is private.  All the usual single and dual-paddle modes are supported, with the default being iambic-B.  In this mode, the keyer remembers any key that was pressed during the playing of the previous key.  This means that if you squeeze both keys together, you can get R, K, A, N, C or . (stop) depending on exactly which key you touch first and when you release each key.

Dual-paddle key

I have one of the cheapest dual-paddle keys I could find, with a heavy steel base so it doesn’t slide around the desk, see the photo at the top of this page. You can adjust the contact distance of each paddle and also the total pressure required.  I have set the contact distance to the smallest value that doesn’t cause inadvertent contact and a fairly high contact pressure so that you can feel the contact.

I’ve not tried any other dual-paddle keys although you can easily twice to four times as much, i.e. over £200.  The expensive keys certainly look pretty but I’d need a lot more than that to justify buying one.

How is it going?

I’m right at the earliest stage, discovering the best way to use squeeze keying. This is taking a lot of practice to understand as the timing is very critical.  I’ve got it set to 12 wpm, which is a good compromise between the character speed of 18 wpm I set for reading (but spaced to the effective speed of 9 or 10 wpm) and the speed at which I can operate the key.

The main issue I’m finding at the moment is avoiding extra dits: because it remembers the dit key being pressed whilst a dah is being emitted, it is easy to get an extra dit tagged onto characters, or even a double dit before a dah.  This means that I can’t key reliably at any speed at present.

I will report again after a bit more practice.