High End Dual-Lever Keyer Paddles

摘要

With keyers featuring dit and dah insertion modes, holding the dit lever while tapping the dah lever inserts one dah into a series of dits - for example, to produce the Morse letter L. Similarly, you can produce the letter Q by holding the dah lever closed for two dahs, then tapping the dit lever to insert one dit before the final dah. ARRL Test Engineer Bob Allison, WB IGCM, carried out the measurements using a strain gauge while each paddle was resting directly on a typical laminate operating surface, and again with a thin high-friction pad between the paddle and the table surface. N2DAN MERCURY Steve Nurkiewicz, WA2YBR (later N2DAN), described his prototype Mercury keyer paddle in April 1968 QST before the paddle series even had a name.2 His article inaugurated the idea of using magnets, radier than springs, for tensioning, and the Mercury set a decades-long -standard for handcrafted paddles.