so i passed my general a few months back and ive been doing mostly SSB but always wanted to get into CW. finally ordered a cheap dual-lever paddle off amazon (nothing fancy, some brand called Morsex or something like that) and hooked it up to my old MFJ keyer that i borrowed from a club member.

the problem is i really dont understand the difference between iambic mode A and mode B and whether i should even bother with iambic at all. ive been watching youtube videos and half of them say iambic squeezing is the way to go and the other half say just use single lever or straight key to start. im sending like 8-10 wpm right now and it sounds pretty rough honestly.

also is there a trick to setting the keyer weight and speed so that it sounds less... choppy? like my dits sound fine but my dahs feel a little long or maybe im just imagining it. any advice from people who actually went through this would be great

oh man i remember this exact stage, it feels like youre fighting the paddle more than using it. honestly for where you are right now i wouldnt even worry about iambic A vs B, that distinction starts mattering more when youre up around 20+ wpm and doing a lot of squeeze keying. at 8-10 wpm just practice sending individual letters cleanly and get your muscle memory sorted first.

for the weight setting — most keyers default to something like 50% which should be fine to start, but if your dahs are feeling long try bumping the weight down just a little and see if that helps. could also just be the paddle tension being set a bit loose so your fingers are accidentally holding the dah paddle a hair too long. tighten the tension screw just slightly and see if that cleans it up. the MFJ keyers have a little quirk where the knobs are super sensitive so dont go crazy with adjustments.

honestly the best thing i ever did was just get on the air even when i sounded terrible. QRS nets are out there and people are patient. dont wait until you think youre ready because that day never comes lol

im sort of in the same boat, been at CW for about 6 months now. one thing that helped me a lot was the G4FON trainer software, its free and you can set it to do Koch method which builds letters up gradually. way better than trying to learn the whole alphabet at once and then wondering why nothing sticks.

also dont sleep on just copying callsigns off the DX clusters and trying to send them back on the keyer. sounds weird but practicing real callsigns is different than practicing random letters and it starts to feel more like actual operating