[Fists] Ultimatic keying question

[Maxwell Moon]

Hello,

The discussion about Ultimatic keying has piqued my curiosity, especially since I have a Jackson Harbor Island Keyer 2 with that capability. However, what I've found is that in parctice, the keyer operates differently than the manual says it should.

The problem has to do one part of Ultimatic operation. Everything is FB with except that dahs will not interrupt or insert into a string of dits while the previously-closed dit contact remains closed. In the opposite situation 
it's perfect (e.g., forming a comma: press & hold the dah lever, then press & release the dit lever long enough for it to insert 2 dits, and then release the dah lever after 2 more dahs are formed). Try to form a question mark & you get only six dits (or six dits & a dah if the 'dah memory' feature is 'on', regardless of when or for how long the dah lever was closed).

This may be quirky but by design (it sounds roughly similar to a dah-primacy feature David Ring mentioned regarding the Eico keyer). It may be a construction flaw (Where is my assistant who does all the soldering? Hey, you, you're fired!). It could also be an operator error, such as having some other keyer function in the wrong position (just as an example, maybe the Iambic A/B 'switch' must be in one particular position while operating Ultimatic, even though the Iambic mode is over-ridden). 

If you have a Jackson Harbor keyer with the Ultimatic mode option, I'd really appreciate it if you'd let me know how yours works with that mode

Thanks very much,
Max, k0max