Rockmite Log 22/11/11

I have, in the past, used this blog as a lab notebook. I'm not sure how intersting it all is to others, but it works out really well for me. So.....

Yesterday, I changed out the keyer on the boxed Rockmite, (a single frequency radio kit available from qrpme. I'd used a set of switches I broke out of a junked TV for years, but they finally gave out.

Oh! I also built a new power cord for the rig.

Here's the steps:

The new power cord has a 9 volt battery connector on one side, but that's not what it's for. It attaches to these 12 volt AA battery holders we use. We: (Me and the 11, 10, and 9 year old gang.)

With that accomplished, I set in on the key revamp.

I removed the old keys. I'd forgotten that part of the reason I'd been so happy to have them was that they had screw nuts already built-in, making them easier to attach to the box:

I remembered to take a picture of the color coded wires, from left to right at this angle, they are 'di', 'da', and 'key program' and their respective colors are brown, then re, and then orange.

The brown wire shown on the right is the ground, (a common ground was another nice feature of the old TV switches).

They are now attached to the repurposed prototype input buttons from the 11 year-old's binary adder project from a few years back.

No pictures of the new key setup yet. I'll try to remedy that later today. In the meantime, here's an even earlier prototype of the switches in use:

And maybe I'll get to try out the keyer this weekend? There's no contests scheduled on the 20 meter band.

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