[Elecraft] start with straight key or paddles?

[Thom R LaCosta]

On Fri, 20 May 2005, Mike Morrow wrote:

>> 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.

I think it can all be traced to Entwistle the Lab Technician.  Entwistle was a 
Sooner, bouncing from facility to facility.  Along with other bad habits, such 
as womanizing, chewing tobacco, drinking and passing gas in public, he used mode B.

Rather than be confronted with his unseemly life style, the designers would not 
only assign prototype building, but also product testing to Entwistle. Since he
didn't know mode B, he could neither build or test it, and simply told the 
designers that their design was faulty, and suggested an alternative that he 
felt confident would pass alll tests(Mode B).

Rumor has it that he was related to Daedalus & Icarus.  While IBM will not 
confirm his employment in Persoanl Computer development efforts, the fact that 
the early PC could not process simple addition problems may be an Entwistle 
signature.

73,Thom-k3hrn
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