KB6NU's Ham Radio Blog

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Operating Notes: My CW Technician

Posted: 30 Mar 2017 12:50 PM PDT
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My friend, Paul, KW1L, is my CW technician—in the literal sense of the
word. He is all about the technique of CW sending, even to the point where
he pays more attention to how to set up a key and how to position the key
and your fingers on the key than he does to actually making CW contacts.
Hes always telling me that I dont know how to send Morse Code properly.

Well, when he heard that Id purchased a new Begali paddle, he volunteered
to come over and help me get it set up properly.Â*And, to help me do that,
he volunteered to bring over his 50 g force gageÂ*(see below).



Bruna Begali actually gave him this forceÂ*gage last year at the Dayton
Hamvention when he purchased a key late Saturday afternoon. You can get
your own from eBay. It costs $25, plus $12.90 shipping to the U.S.

As you can see, what you do is to place the arm on the paddle, then slowly
apply pressure until the paddle contacts close. Then, you can read the
force directly on the analog meter. Paul says that youre supposed to set
the tension toÂ*40 g. If the reading is more or less than that, you adjust
the tension and make the measurement again.

On the Magnetic Pro, there are two tensionÂ*adjustment knobs on the back of
the key. This moves the magnet in or out, increasing orÂ*decreasing the
tension. (See photo below.) After a few tweaks, we were able to set the
tension on both paddles very close to 40 g.



Yesterday, I decided to play around with the adjustments again. First, I
decided to make the tension a little stiffer. The reason for this is that
when trying to send at 30+ wpm,Â*I started making a lot of errors. My hope
was that increasing the tension would break the contacts faster.

Before I touched the knobs, though, I put a little dot on them. The dots
let me gauge how much I turn each one, so that I turn each of them equally.
I first turned each of the knobs a full turn, but that was too much
tension. I backed each off a half turn, and found that a lot more to my
liking.

Then, I decided to try adjusting the space between the paddles. This is a
feature of the Magnetic Pro thats not found on a lot of other paddles. To
do this, you adjust the positions of the set screws on the outside of the
tension knobs. (The photo above is not that great, but if you look closely
you can see the screws.)

I had to eyeball this adjustment as I dont have any kind of gauge for this
measurement, but I think I got it pretty close. After making this
adjustment, I had to again adjust the gap for each contact. To make this
adjustment, Begali included a little feeler gage with the key. I like the
gap a little wider, though, so after adjusting the gap with the feeler
gage, I backed them off a little.

I made a couple of contacts after making these adjustments and like them.
Now, Im going to have to have Paul back so that he can give his blessing to
my adjustments.
Links

How to adjust iambic paddles with a dynamometer
Morse Code: An Overview Part 3. Â*Paul says, Take a look at this video on
how to properly send. Â*Start at 3:25.


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