so ive been a tech for about two years and just upgraded to general last month, and i always told myself id learn morse even though its not required anymore. got myself a used bencher paddle off ebay and a little keyer built into my radio (ic-7300) and honestly im more confused than when i started.

the paddle feels weird to me. like i can tell im squeezing wrong or something because the dits and dahs are coming out all jumbled. i set the speed to like 10wpm thinking that would be easy but it almost feels harder than when i bumped it up to 13? not sure if thats normal. also the iambic modes A and B - i read about them but genuinely cannot figure out which one i should use. just picked A arbitrarily.

been using the G4FON trainer on my laptop to practice copying and thats actually going okay, im recognizing letters pretty reliably now up to maybe 12wpm. but my sending is a mess. is there a good way to practice sending without embarrassing myself on the air or did you all just kind of jump in and deal with it

The sending feeling weird with a paddle is totally normal at first, honestly took me probably three or four months before my hand stopped fighting the thing. One thing that helped me a lot was slowing WAY down and just doing single characters over and over, not words, just like dah-dit-dit for D until it felt automatic. The muscle memory thing is real and you cant rush it.

On the iambic A vs B question - most people I know just stick with A and never look back. B is for a specific squeezing technique and if you dont already know what youre doing with it it just causes problems. Stay on A for now.

And yeah just get on the air. Find one of the slow speed nets, there are a few specifically for people learning, SKCC has beginner-friendly stuff too if you want to go straight key eventually. Nobody on those nets is going to judge a wobbly fist, they were all there once. The embarrassment mostly exists in your head.

the speed thing you mentioned is actually a known thing - 10wpm can feel harder because your brain has more time to second-guess itself between elements. some people find the farnsworth method helps, where you send characters at a faster speed but put longer gaps between them. worth trying in G4FON, i think it has that setting.

also dont stress too much about sending perfectly before getting on air. theres a whole calling frequency on 40m around 7.050 ish that tends to have slower qso's, and people will qrs if you ask them to. worst case someone doesnt respond, its not a big deal. good luck with it, CW is genuinely fun once it clicks