so ive been at this for a few weeks now and i just cant wrap my head around iambic mode. i practiced straight key for a while and that felt pretty natural after a bit but ever since i switched to the paddle and keyer i feel like im fighting the thing constantly. my dits and dahs come out all jumbled, especially on letters like C and K where you need to squeeze both paddles.

im running a bencher BY-1 into an old MFJ keyer, memory is mode B i think. ive watched a bunch of videos and everyone makes it look so easy. is there a certain speed i should be practicing at? ive got the keyer set to like 12 wpm right now but maybe thats too slow or too fast, i honestly dont know. any tips from people who went through this would be great because im starting to think im just not cut out for it

dont give up on it, seriously. iambic took me way longer than i expected and i had been doing CW for years before i switched from a straight key. the squeeze technique for letters like C really does feel unnatural at first and your brain kind of has to rewire itself a bit.

one thing that helped me a lot was slowing way down, like almost embarrassingly slow, maybe 8 or 9 wpm, just to get the muscle memory right before speeding back up. also some people actually get along better with mode A if mode B is tripping you up, worth trying. the difference is how it handles the last element when you release but honestly just try both and see which one makes more sense to your fingers. the bencher is a solid paddle so its not the gear thats the issue, just takes time. keep at it

i went through basically the exact same thing lol. what finally clicked for me was just sending random letters over and over instead of trying to do real words. like just dit-dah dit-dah for A until my hand stopped thinking about it. also i read somewhere that 15-18 wpm is actually easier to learn iambic at than super slow speeds because the timing is more forgiving with the squeeze, something about the element timing working in your favor. not sure if thats true for everyone but it worked for me weirdly enough