so ive been trying to learn iambic mode for a few weeks now and honestly im starting to wonder if i even set this up right. i have a Begali Spark paddle and im running it into my IC-7300 with the built in keyer set to mode B. everything works fine when im just doing single letters but the moment i try to squeeze out characters i keep getting extra dits or dahs where i dont want them and it sounds like garbage on the air.

ive watched probably a dozen youtube videos and read the arrl handbook section on keyers twice and i still feel like my timing is just completely off. my speed is set to about 16 wpm which i thought would be slow enough to get the muscle memory going but maybe thats still too fast for where im at. is there a point where you just give up on iambic and go back to single lever? cause a buddy of mine who has 30 years of CW experience told me he switched back to a straight key years ago and never looked back lol.

not sure if this is a keyer setting issue or just a me issue honestly

oh man this was me like two years ago, i felt like i was fighting the paddle constantly. what finally clicked for me was slowing way down, like embarrassingly slow, 10 or even 8 wpm just to really feel where each squeeze starts and ends. 16 is actually still pretty fast for building muscle memory with iambic, your brain is trying to learn two things at once -- the code AND the squeeze timing.

also worth checking your dit/dah ratio and the weight setting if your keyer has one. sometimes the default settings on the 7300 feel a little stiff to me. and honestly mode A vs mode B makes a real difference depending on how you learned -- some guys find mode A less aggravating when starting out because it doesnt insert that extra element. might be worth just trying it for a day and see if it feels different to you.

stick with the paddle though, iambic really does get natural eventually. your buddy with the straight key is just old school haha nothing wrong with that either

Same boat here, just passed my general last month and been trying to get on 40m CW. The squeezing thing really messed with my head too. I ended up just doing 30 minutes of practice on the LCWO website every morning with a straight key first to keep the characters fresh and then I mess around with the paddle separately. Keeping them kind of separate in my head helped for some reason. No idea if thats the right approach but its working ok for me so far.