Winter Sports Kit

Well, the festivities have gone into remission for a day or two and my mind has switched back to the shack - not to address the boring software task which is the next step on the path to multi-band operation for the multi-mode beacon, but to get stuck into a good honest piece of mechanical work...

I had already completed the electronic side of the touch paddle - but it needed an enclosure to make it suitably robust to use in anger. I found an old Hammond enclosure, which once contained a small switch-mode audio amplifier which recently went belly up (I'm still not sure why). The donor enclosure even had a nice PP3 battery enclosure - but I needed to make a new "front panel".

The front panel has the job of supporting the paddle "blade", which is made of a sandwich of three pieces of PCB material. It occurred to me that soldering would be a good means of mechanical as well as electrical connection - so I decided to use similar fibreglass PCB material to make the new front panel.

Here's the system, without its lid on...

and this shot from the reverse angle shows how the "blades" are mounted...

Here's the finished article (with the rather more expensive "Bencher" paddle lurking ironically in the background)...

The new touch paddle partners nicely with my Funster Plus rig, to make the "Winter Sports" package seen below...

Also visible at the left of the lashed-together rig is a new, experimental CW filter I've been working on - more details to follow.

I enjoyed my first QSO with the new, boxed touch sensitive paddle with John, g4oyc and now have the opportunity to make a few more QRP contacts - with no moving parts!

...-.- de m0xpd