RE: Iambic Myth

[Ron D'Eau Claire-2]

I used Iambic keying because I found it smooth and easy and it does involve
fewer paddle movements for many things. Sometimes it cuts the hand motions
by half!

For example, sending CQ involves only eight finger movements in Iambic mode
compared to sixteen movements in conventional keyer mode. (Iambic mode
requires dash on, dit on, dash and dit off (end of C), dash on, touch dit,
dash and dit off (end of Q). Conventional keying requires  dash on, dash
off, dit on, dit off, dash on, dash off, dit on, dit off (C) dash on, dash
off, dash on, dash off, dit on, dit off, dash on, dash off (Q)).  

Someone might argue that cutting the finger movements in half has no
practical value and doesn't allow faster sending. I wouldn't know since I've
never exceeded 35 or 40 WPM on the air and 99.9% of my QSO's are at around
20 WPM or even less.

What I do know is that I enjoyed the smooth simplicity of Iambic keying.

Most of the histories I've read attributed the modes A and B to a mistake in
the logic in an early popular ASIC designed for keyers. It might have been
Curtiss' original but I'm not sure about that. In any case, it was a very
usable variation and it "stuck", hence the two modes.

Also, I'd like to point out that Iambic keying predates virtually every
commercially made keyer and paddle set on the market today. Electronic
keyers go back at least to the 1940's, although they didn't have the fancy
self completing and auto spacing features we take for granted now. Still,
hardly a month went by when QST didn't have something about new keyer
development in it. I was finally hooked in the early 70's when the CMOS
version of the Accu-keyer (it originally used current-hungry TTL chips) was
published.  At that time I splurged on some inexpensive "Ham key" paddles,
which were dual paddles. Many operators bolted two J-38 keys base-to-base on
a vertical support to use as paddles or homebrewed paddles in a variety of
ways.

There were no commercial interests driving those developments. They were
coming out of the junk boxes and workshops of Hams all over the world.
Today's huge range of expensive keyers and paddles came along long after the
use of keyers and Iambic mode was in common use by Hams who "rolled their
own" one way or another.

So I'm not inclined to blame the development of the modes or the widespread
use of Iambic mode on any commercial activity. It's just something a lot of
Hams found useful and they adopted it.

Ron AC7AC

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