[Elecraft] start with straight key or paddles?

[Mike Morrow]

I wrote:

> Thank goodness for iambic mode A.  I never understood how mode B,  
> the result of a logic design error in an early (1960s) electronic keyer  
> design, caught on.

Bill wrote:

>I built a Mini-MOS key (from a 73 magazine article) back in 1979. It  
>has dot and dash memories -- the quality that gives it Mode B. It  
>takes extra circuitry to do this -- it's not just a "logic design
>error".

And Dan wrote:

>I had a Heathkit keyer on which I learned iambic, and it was all
>discrete logic gates and RC circuits. No ICs. It did exactly what
>the schematic said it would do. No error there.

True, mode B did catch on (long before 1979) and circuits and chips were purposely designed to implement it.  But the evil that spawned mode B occurred in an improperly designed keyer from the mid-1960s.  Somewhere I've specific details...but not with me now.

>I don't find Mode B timing impossible - in fact, it is more relaxed  
>than mode A -- you let go of the paddles a lot sooner.

Which is the **only** "advantage" that can be claimed for mode B, though I see no value to this "advantage" and a "lot" sooner is not how I would quantify it.  If mode B reduced the number of paddle manipulations required over mode A, it would have purpose.  But exactly the same amount of paddle manipulation is required regardless of character sent.

>I think the bottom line is that you prefer whatever technique
>you've trained on.

There's 100 percent agreement here!  Learn one mode and the other will seem impossible.  

I haven't any moral objections to mode B, just to the firmware designers who design an embedded keyer in a rig to use only one mode and that mode is mode B!  (Example...the nasty FT-817!!)  For whatever reasons some such firmware designers seem more often to choose mode B, so I actually recommend that mode B be the mode learned if one is just learning iambic keying.

Thank goodness the Elecraft keyers allow either mode!

73,
Mike / KK5F