[Trlog] While they're fresh...

[Dale L Martin]

About ten or more years ago, I went to Home Depot/Builder's Square, etc.,
and bought a couple of springs, a piano hinge and a piece of 1"x6"x6' and
stopped on the way home at the local electronics parts outlet and picked up
a dual momentary switch (in case I needed to switch two things at
once--never happened, so they are wired in parallel).

I cut the 1x6x6 in half, slapped the other hardware on it and voila! A
footswitch under the desk that even I can't lose.

The two springs provide about the right resistance to foot pressure.  I can
make it more sensitive by turning it over and letting the weight of the
momentary switches make it easier for my foot to key the switch.  Sometimes
I operate literally barefoot and let my big toe do F1 on the footswitch.

Also, it's big enough that it doesn't move around on the carpet unless I
push it around with my feet.

73,
dale, kg5u

>
> Ron writes:
> > I have an old remote print switch. It is housed in a 1/4" high
> 1"x3" little
> > case. Nice flat square button. I set that below the space bar
> or pick it up
> > and use it while leaning back in the chair if I don't want the
> vox on. I use
> > this as well as a footswitch and the keyboard Left CTRL-SHIFT.
>
> I had missed Pete's point, I assumed he was using the footswitch for
> another option. VOX is really the only way to go but it does require
> a smooth transition to transmit and back again to receive. If it's not
> "perfect" every time, vox is a distraction for sure.
>
> I believe they make really nice footswitches for other applications but
> I have never seen one. I just tried George's idea of using the
> control shift
> with tone off for keyboard PTT. Works for me. All the keyboards here
> (IBM, Compaq, Gateway, off shore clones) have the control shift together.
>
> >From this discussion maybe it would be helpful for TRLog to default the
> tone to zero when in SSB mode. Most of my keyboards have a
> "Windoze" logo, could that be used for single key PTT? If so, maybe it
> could be called the keyboard footswitch and have all the same options
> as the real one. Oops, just heard Ron cringe, but I like Pete's idea. I
> know adding extra ptt hardware is easy but we have this big tray of
> nice flat square buttons in front of us anyway (keyboard) so might as
> well use them.
>
> 73 Rich KL7RA
>