so ive been doing CW for about 8 months now and i finally bought a halfway decent paddle (Vibroplex clone, nothing fancy) and hooked it up to my old K3NG keyer build. the keyer itself works fine i think but im getting these weird extra dits squeezed in when im trying to send letters like C and K. started wondering if its me or the iambic mode B behavior.

i came from using a straight key so the whole squeeze keying thing is still pretty foreign to me. i can send maybe 15 wpm on a good day with the straight key but the paddle at the same speed feels like im fighting it. should i just switch to mode A or is there some trick to getting used to the squeeze thing that i'm missing. also my paddle tension is set pretty light, maybe thats part of it?

mode B drives a lot of people crazy when they're coming from straight key, honestly you might just want to switch to mode A and forget about it. the difference only really matters if you're doing true iambic squeeze sending and most people aren't even doing that properly. mode A is a little more forgiving because it doesn't add that extra element at the end of a squeeze.

on the tension thing — yeah lighter isn't always better. i actually run mine a bit heavier than most people would recommend because i tend to tense up when i'm concentrating and i'd overshoot dashes. just fiddle with it at whatever speed you're comfortable at and find what doesn't cause mistakes. give yourself a week with mode A and see if the extra dits go away.

im in basically the same boat lol been at it about 6 months and just moved to paddles last month. the extra dits thing happened to me too and someone told me to slow way down first, like 10 wpm, and just get the muscle memory for the squeeze before bringing the speed back up. also there's a thing called the dit-dah memory that mode B does where it remembers if you squeezed and adds one more element and yeah its confusing at first. hang in there it does click eventually or so i'm told haha