[UK-CONTEST] Keyboard reduces fatigue

[Peter Hobbs]

> Concentration needs to be far higher when sending with a
> paddle.

This entirely depends upon your "mother" input mechanism.  The western world
hasn't spawned professional morse operators for many years I know, but for
many of
those, using the paddle is at least as natural a process as talking.  Some
of the RN
ops I served with would chat amongst themselves on completely unrelated
subjects at the
same time as sending a coded signal or weather report.  So planning your
next move,
tuning and listening on the second receiver is a doddle.  Buffering would be
measured
not in characters but several  words.  Most of the RN traffic was in 5
letter groups and
anyone who could only copy one group behind got a really hard time from the
Chief!

Not that I'm anywhere near up with those old guys of course, with only 5
years of full-time
RN/commercial operating, but having used a paddle for a while (who remembers
the
OZ7BO keyer? - separate controls to adjust spacing and dot/dash ratio in
real time to
suit your mood - cool!) any other input method is akin to struggling with a
foreign language
and rapidly wears me down.

The main problem for me is not concentration or fatigue but maintaining an
automatic dupe
sheet when running, which is why logging of calls from the keyer would be
ace.  Tim 'VXE
kindly remembered G3WVG's original "log" programme.  Does anyone know if
this was
Turbolog V.1, or whether the current version still has a keyer acquisition
mode?

73

Peter G3LET