[Elecraft] [K3] Wetting current and CW paddles

[Bill Frantz]

When I built a single level paddle, I decided to use silver for 
the contacts after hearing that all the corrosion products of 
silver were conductive. I soldered two short pieces of silver 
wire, contributed by a jewelry maker in the family, at right 
angles to each other on the contact bases.

In spite of mostly sitting on the shelf for five or so years, 
presumably corroding, this system still works quite reliably. I 
have recently been using it with a Rockmite, and it shows no 
signs of intermittency.

73 Bill AE6JV

On 10/15/20 at 11:04 AM, elecraft at mailman.qth.net (CUTTER DAVID 
via Elecraft) wrote:

>Using a favourite pre-war Morse key on vintage valve gear, it 
>worked perfectly, but on modern solid state equipment it was 
>very intermittent and I didn't want to make an interface. 
>Solution, clean the contacts. Conclusion: modern gear needs 
>better contacts than the old stuff.

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