On Tue, 11 Feb 2014, Kafkaësque wrote:

On 11/02/2014 19:49, gareth wrote:
I wonder if any have experimented with magnets hovering over
reed relays to act as the contacts of a Morse Key, possibly on
the vibrating arm of a bug key?

The reason i ask is the difficulty of excising noise on the dot contact
of the bug key I made a couple of years ago.

I bought a Ten-Tec keyer at a rally, which used electromagnets instead of
springs.

I hated it - ended up flogging it on ebay and got a Katsumi instead.


Didn't semi-automatic keys use magnets for something? I remember seeing
an article about making one, and I remember magnets, even if I can't
remember their purpose.

One could do away with the paddle. Have two microswitches and
attach levers to them, and key by pressing one or the other, rather than
moving a lever sideways. Those have been described in the magazines.

In this day and age of computer keyboards, using two fingers to press
"alternate buttons" might be a more familiar thing than a lever back and
forth. Plus, it's similar to how you use a straight key.

Michael