[CW] Side Swiper Sending

[D.J.J. Ring, Jr.]

How to Send with a Sideswiper or Cootie Key.

uggestions from David J. Ring, Jr., N1EA as learned from sideswiper greats
from the present and past and his own fumblings.

ant to Send with a Sideswiper or Cootie Key? Here's how!
Here are two ways of trying cootie key without much work are given below:

   - 1. The bug rubber band method. Tie the vibrator to the damper with a
   rubber band, readjust the dot contact adjustment to produce a good steady
   contact. This (of course!) is reversible.
   - 2. Take a single lever paddle, short the dot/dash contact posts with a
   wire. Plug key into straight key jack.

f you've never spotted the rare cootie key, either the wild or domesticated
species, a recording is here:
Demonstration of cootie key
sending.<http://mikea.ath.cx/www.n1ea.coastalradio.org.uk/cootie_sending.mp3>

(It is of me when I had just learned to send on the cootie several years ago
- the tenuous cootie key with stage fright.
Sometimes a cootie (also called a sideswiper) is confused with an expert on
the hand key. Some hand key operators can achieve 30 wpm which is also a
fast cootie key speed. Here is a recording of a fast hand key:
Recording of a fast hand
key<http://mikea.ath.cx/www.n1ea.coastalradio.org.uk/fast_hand_key.mp3>

When learning the cootie, I tried with the "fingers start first" system
recommended by some wire telegraphists and old timers and I found it very
smooth but I also found it very confusing as I wanted to send with a bug and
one key confused the other!
I soon modified this to use this method:
Start each letter with the same hand motion as a bug, then alternate the
closures from that point. Thus a morse character beginning with a dash would
always start with the fingers; a character beginning with a dot, the thumb.
This was my only modification of the LRLRLR type (or RLRLRLRL etc.) type of
motion.
I can force myself to send "fingers grab first" but it seems on the next
letter, I'm leading as if I'm sending on a bug again. So I didn't fight it,
I went with the flow.
Unevenness - I have noticed that I occasionally get "confused" about which
side to send on - but since a cootie is bi-directional, I have learned not
to worry about it, so any delay or break in the flow is minimized. Basically
I adopt the "if it feels like it should go this way in motion, do it."
approach.
Adjustment of sideswiper: Most operators find that it is easier to send
clearly with different spacings on the left and right. I give myself a bit
more spacing on the left hand side (which closes with the push of my
fingers). I also add a bit more spring on that side with the Vibroplex
Sideswiper:
N1EA's Modified Vibroplex VibroKeyer. <../keys/n1ea-keys.php#vibrokeyer>
The keys settings should be adjusted for CLARITY of sending.
The hand key recording mentioned above was from a 1910-era disk recording.
At the beginning I sent the same text as later sent by hand key by keyboard.
How fast is the fellow going? He is uneven, but he sends between 23 and 25
wpm.
The signal which sounds like "III" is the international Morse for "period".
The sound for the comma (now) used to be the sound for the exclamation point
which now has no sound for it. There were other differences in early 20th
century Morse but I forget what they were. I think the last change was the
dropping of the separator signal (used to separate fractions from whole
numbers) to the hyphen (which is still currently used for this) around 1965.

73
David Ring, N1EA
-30-
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