[Elecraft] Why is K2 so easy to send cw with?

[Ian Stirling G4ICV, AB2GR]

On Tuesday 21 June 2005 03:13, Ron D'Eau Claire wrote:

> The difference between mode A and B lies in what the keyer does when both

  Thanks Ron for your clear description of the keyer logic.

I passed my 12 wpm test at the General Post Office headquarters
in London in 1979 'by the skin of my teeth'. There was just
one examiner who gave the session to four of us. He had us
do the sending test (part of it back then) to get it out of
the way, as he said - everyone can do this part.
 As a warm up, he sent the required three minute passage,
manually with a straight key. When two of us had a good copy
(less than three errors), he wrote out their pass slips,
sent them on their way, and told the other chap and me,
 "All right, this is the real test."  The other chap passed
and I had four receive errors.
  "Hmm .. better get it right this time - I'm going to give
you one more chance."  Third time lucky, or I had warmed up
to his style of sending (over 12 wpm if you ask me). He wrote
out my pass slip (really, I must frame it), and practically
begged me to use Morse and not just regard it as a necessary
evil to get on the HF bands.
   That was on the 6th of April, 1979.

 Three or four months later with practice on the radio,
(G4ICV in the post three weeks later) I needed something
faster than a straight key. I made a dual paddle keyer with
logic chips on Veroboard from a design in the RSGB's
Radio Communication, February 1980,
 "The 'ultimate' Keyer (Mk2) - with automatic intercharacter
spacing - C.I.B. Trusson, MSC, CEng, MIEE, G3RVM."
 I had 30 wpm contacts with that. It's the only iambic keyer
I can use accurately and it's still a magician's logic design
that can generate Morse from two paddles. In G3RVM's design,
he uses two 4011s, a 4023, 4001, 4002 and a 4013.
 A low priority task for me is to decode this logic and
enshrine it in a microcontroller.
 I regret dismantling my original mechanical design of this
to connect a Bencher paddle system.

  Now, I don't trust myself not to send a character short or
an extra dit or dah. I have given up completely with iambic
keyers.
  I prefer a straight key. But for faster sending,
I have programmed a PIC16F624 that lives inside a standard
PC keyboard that receives the incredible gibberish from its
data and clock lines and translates it to Morse using the
three keyboard LEDs for feedback.   I had interest from the
people at ARRL to publish this design - but one chip and an
optional resistor and output transistor isn't much of a hardware
project.  They suggested I write a tutorial on PIC programming.
  I never completed the suggested ARRL article.

 I have rewritten the firmware for a Freescale (Motorola) 908.
That's a processor, something I am really happy to programme.
See www.njqrp.org somewhere for a description about why a
linear address space 908 is nicer and more powerful than a
PIC chip.

For now, I have a unique keyboard keyer for whenever I rarely
need to go faster than I can send using my straight key.

Ian, G4ICV, AB2GR.
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