so ive been at this for about four months now, started on a straight key which felt natural enough, made QSOs on 40m, nobody complained too much about my sending at least. then i bought a paddle thinking it would make things easier and honestly it just made everything worse. im using a Begali Traveler that a friend gave me at hamfest and its a gorgeous piece of kit but i feel like a complete idiot every time i sit down to use it.

the keyer im running it through is built into my IC-7300 and ive got it set to iambic mode B i think, read somewhere thats the one most people use. problem is my dits and dahs are all getting jumbled, i squeeze for a B and sometimes i get like three extra characters coming out, letters im not sending. also my spacing is terrible, words all run together or i leave huge gaps.

is there a method to learning this that actually works? i tried going back to basics with just sending individual letters but i dont know, maybe im just not wired for iambic. someone at the club told me to try mode A instead but i dont really understand the difference between them honestly. any tips would be really appreciated, feels like im going backwards here.

Oh man, I remember this exact phase. Took me probably three months of near-daily practice before iambic started feeling natural and I still have bad days. One thing that actually helped me was slowing waaaay down in the keyer settings, like embarrassingly slow, 10 wpm or even less, and just drilling individual letters until the muscle memory clicked before bumping speed back up. The IC-7300 keyer is fine for this, nothing wrong with mode B to start.

The squeezing thing is a real adjustment. Your brain wants to send like a typewriter but a paddle isn't a typewriter. I found it helped to think less about individual dits and dahs and more about the rhythm of the whole letter. Also check your paddle tension and spacing, Begali paddles sometimes ship a bit loose from what I recall and if theres too much slop youll generate characters you didnt intend. Try tightening the gap just a little and see if that helps with the runaway dits problem. Mode A vs B honestly doesnt matter much at your stage, pick one and stick with it for a while before switching.

yeah the Begali is probably fine its almost certainly you lol, i mean that in the nicest way possible because it was absolutely me when i was learning too. seriously though four months isnt very long for iambic, some guys take a year before it feels right. have you tried just sending practice text and recording yourself on the radio? listening back is kind of painful but it shows you exactly where youre losing it. i use the built in USB audio from the 7300 and just record into audacity sometimes, you can see the waveform and everything which is actually kind of interesting to see where your timing is off.