I have two small hand winders and one full size crank winder. Winding beginning to end on my hand.

In normal operations I have a tape catch that was purpose built for this hanging off my computers reader. Once all the tape has spooled into the catch I just take the end, put it on a winder, and wind it back up.

I recently acquired some fanfold paper tape, but do not have a fanfold reader. It stacks itself neatly after being read.

-Eric

On Sun, Apr 17, 2022, 12:43 PM Paul Heller <coloradoradioclubwebmaster@gmail.com> wrote:

It’s looking good, Eric. Once you get the hang of it, it’s fairly easy to do. But also easily forgotten.

Question: do you wind the tape on your hand from beginning to end, or end to beginning? I assume beginning to end, in the order it comes out the machine.

For very long runs of tape, the winders are more useful in my opinion. The winders occasionally show up, but never the unwinders. I’ve been looking for years for an unwinder. Maybe they were not very popular.

Paul
W2TTY

On Apr 17, 2022, at 9:43 AM, Jim Cooper <jim.w2jc@gmail.com> wrote:

On 17 Apr 2022 at 9:57, Eric Moore wrote:

I am using 8 bit punched tape, but luckily I have large hands :)

Are you supposed to be able to feed
the tape from the beginning? Would you
hang it off your finger or a nail? I
tried and it twisted up on itself.

when it is wound up on your hand in the
'figure 8' style, you should be able to feed
the tape out FROM THE CENTER and it will
untwist left then right then left so that there
are no twists going into the TD