so ive been trying to learn iambic mode B on my keyer for about three weeks now and honestly im more confused than when i started. i picked up a cheap set of paddles off ebay and wired them up to my radio's keyer input and it mostly works but when i try to squeeze both paddles at the same time to get that automatic dit-dah alternating thing going it just feels... wrong? like my letters are coming out mushy and i cant tell if its a timing issue or if my paddles need adjusting or if my fingers just havent got the muscle memory yet.

i came from straight key which i used for about a year before anyone told me paddles were even a thing, so maybe thats part of the problem. my elmer says i should slow way down and i have, im sending at like 10 wpm on the keyer but it still feels unnatural. does it just take longer than three weeks to click? any tips from people who made this transition would be really appreciated

Three weeks is nothing, honestly. I messed around with paddles for probably two months before anything felt natural and even then there were letters that gave me trouble for a long time. The squeeze keying thing especially takes a while because your brain has to stop thinking about individual elements and start thinking in terms of characters, which is a completely different muscle memory than straight key work.

One thing that really helped me was turning the speed DOWN further than felt comfortable, like embarrassingly slow, maybe 8 wpm, and just drilling individual characters over and over without worrying about making QSOs. Also check your paddle tension and contact gap — if they're too loose or too tight it makes squeeze keying really inconsistent. There's no shame in spending a few sessions just sending the same word a hundred times. I used to send my callsign over and over until it felt automatic. The transition from straight key can actually make it harder at first because you keep wanting to control each dit and dah manually instead of letting the keyer do the work.

yeah mode B vs mode A tripped me up for ages too, i eventually just switched to mode A and never looked back tbh. some people swear by B but i could never get the hang of the difference in how it handles the last element. might be worth trying both and seeing which one feels less awful lol. also what keyer are you using, some of the cheaper built in ones have pretty questionable timing