Rick,
Funny you should mention "sending with anything" - in one of my
typical "oddball" moments I made a single-lever "picopaddle" out of a tiny
SPDT contact assembly I salvaged out of a defunct CD-ROM drive. (My idea was
to find something very small and cheap for possible future ultra-portable
use.) The contact assembly consisted of a couple of copper arms with contacts
on the end and a slightly longer arm in the middle, all molded into a small
plastic base. I put a piece of heatshrink on the longer arm for a "handle",
another piece of heatshrink to keep the contact arms adjusted where I wanted
them, and mounted the thing to a small block of wood. The mechanism itself is
probably about half an inch wide, an inch long, and an eighth of an inch
high. While I've never tried it on the air, I took it to a QRP gathering and
astounded some folks that I could actually send CW with it (albeit at the
default 16 WPM of my little PIC-based keyer board).
Also, concerning your comment that "My right arm would get real tight": the
OTs called that "glass arm". if I remember correctly, dad said to 1) use the
wrist; and 2) set the key for the closest gap and lightest tension that you
could and still send cleanly. Then relax!!!
73, Al
On Tue July 3 2012 8:36:13 am Rick - DJ0IP / NJ0IP wrote:
> BINGO! Excellent, Al.
>
> When you learn on a straight key, "you" learn the rhythm of Morse code.
> You must learn the timing as well as the dits and dahs.
> If you learn using a keyer with any kind of auto-completing, you don't
> worry about timing, and you don't learn to have timing.
>
> I've had about 25 years of listing to the young(er) ops whining at multi-op
> events when the keyer didn't have exactly the one type of keying or the
> other. I could never understand what all the whining was about. I can
> send with anything, even touching two wires together. Some of these guys
> were much better CW ops than me but if they had the wrong keyer or paddle,
> they botched the job or gave up entirely. I always wondered why.
>
> On the other hand, a couple of my old buddies, like me, could send good
> Morse code on any key, paddle or keyer we sat down at. I never understood
> that. Now I do.
>
> Al, you dad nailed it!
>
> So as I see it, if you want to learn code for the test (which is no longer
> necessary anyway), use any crutch you want, but IF YOU WANT TO LEARN IT
> RIGHT, LEARN IT ON A STRAIGHT KEY.
>
> I found 15 wpm pretty easy on the straight key, but I could never keep up
> sending at 20 wpm. My right arm would get real tight, like when arm
> wrestling. You said 18wpm. So somewhere in that range is probably a limit
> for most people, but you can get plenty of mileage out of 15 wpm.
>
> However, I don't want to be guilty of telling James how he should do it and
> insisting my way is the only way. I think it's outstanding that he is so
> dedicated to learning it at all.
>
> 73
> Rick, DJ0IP
_______________________________________________
TenTec mailing list
TenTec@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/tentec
|