Iambic Keying - Debunking the Myth
by
Marshall G. Emm, N1FN
"Iambic or "squeeze" keying is one of the "Great Expectations" in CW operation.
Operators will agonize over a huge variety of
features in electronic keyers, but
support for iambic keying itself is a given. But
Iambic keying is really of very
limited value, and it's easy to become convinced that it was a BAD IDEA that
happened to catch on"
<MAJOR SNIP...full analysis in article below>
http://www.morsex.com/pubs/iambicmyth.pdf
"The Myth Exposed
The idea that iambic keying is more efficient has
been around for a long time, and few operators
ever question it, even if they are having trouble
doing it. They might blame themselves, or the
paddle, and it stops being fun. At first it does
seem to have a certain cool factor, and no doubt
thats why it was invented to start with. Some
computer programmer looked at an electronic
keyer, realized that he was looking at logic
states (dot is on or off, dash is on or off) and decided
to fill in the rest of the truth table he was
using either a or b , and he was using neither a nor
b but he wasnt doing anything with both a and
b. In other words there was a third switch
that wasnt being used. Not a bad idea on the
face of it, and weve been paying the price ever
since.
Iambic keying became all the rage, and
manufacturers got to make a bunch of new-fangled dual
paddles. Somewhere in there electronic keyer
designers decided to offer refinements of the
basic principles, giving everybody Iambic A vs
Iambic B to argue about, and distracting them
from any consideration of whether Iambic Anything
was worth bothering with. Its like saying
the emperor has no clothes, but Ill say it
anyhow iambic keying is clever, and fun, but of very
little practical value. Worse, it can impose a
speed limit on your sending, and ruin another
perfectly good amateur radio myth the widely
accepted notion that anyone can send twice as
fast as he can receive. But lets talk about that one another time....."
The fact that most High Speed Telegraphy contestants use
single paddle keys (i.e. non-iambic) is further proof of the above.
73, Bill W4ZV
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