American Morse KK2 Paddle

This Christamas had a special treat for me. I told my wife that all I wanted for Christmas was an American Morse KK-2 CW paddle, because in 2014 I have a goal to learn CW. She worked with Santa, and the two of them came through for me!

Background: American Morse is a US-based manufacturing company which builds CNC-shaped precision products. They can be found at www.americanmorse.com Their approach is to keep it simple and build a few things really well. I was looking for a solid base station iambic paddle, and the KK-2 seemed like just the thing. It is!

The folks at American Morse build everything as a kit, and can ship kits or built product. I wanted the kit, of course. "I build, therefore I am..." Assembly was a snap--took about 15 min to prebuild, after which I disassembled, sanded out burrs, and did final assembly. This is the final product:

American Morse KK-2 paddle kit, assembled

The paddle arms are machined brass. It's not visible in the picture, but the arms are actually hollowed. The paddle tips are nylon. Everything else is high grade steel. As you can see, I've done nothing to "protect" the steel base--there are some rust spots appearing. I'm tempted to brush the base with my grinder and put a quick clear coat on it. That would look cool, but of course have no effect on the paddle's performance.

The paddle does not ship with a cable. I was toying with building one from scratch but when I got to Radio Shack and priced options, buying a stereo cable turned out to be cheaper vs buying wire and plugs and building it. In keeping with the garish color scheme of the Hendricks PFR3, I bought a lime green cable.

 American Morse KK-2 with cable

Wiring was simple -- first I cut one end off (leaving a couple inches of factory wire, in case I ever need that tip), then I made sure which wires went where on the plug, then I wired them up based on iambic paddle wiring guides online. The outcome is rather nice, I believe:

KK-2 cable wiring

The black wire holder fit the factory cable perfectly. Everything feels solid.

The real question is, how does it work? I'm an absolute beginner when it comes to CW, so all I can say is that it's been a joy to use during my CWOps "CW Academy" training class. The rubber feet you see in the photo leave something to be desired when using the paddle on a Formica desktop. My buddy WB6YOK recommended I cut a mousepad to fit inside the rubber feet, and while I haven't done it yet, the idea has merit. But keying is precise and the device works great. 

According to American Morse, the KK-2 weighs in at 1.5 pounds (24 oz). I haven't weighed it yet, but that seems accurate. As I will be operating in the backcountry as well as from home, having a "mid-weight" unit was important (although I am seriously considering their DCP or Port-a-Paddle kits for lightweight backcountry use).

You can find this paddle online at http://www.americanmorse.com/kk2.htm

Elecraft T1 Tuner Repair

I've been kind of "radio inactive" whilst sorting out a few things over the last 3 years or so. First time operating in quite a while was back in October up in the Fish lake National forest with my sons. Just prior to leaving, I visited my buddy Chuck to run my gear through its paces. We hooked up my T1 QRP tuner (actually a max of 20 watts) to his FT-897 and my PRC74 military radio whip antenna. I keyed an AM carrier, pressed the tune switch and man--that old military whip tuned up in about 1.5 seconds. Well, that's what I thought... In actuality, I either hit it with too much RF (might have turned down the wrong power settings on the 897) or the tuner just hadn't been used in a long while... Regardless, I fried two diodes. They are barely visible on either side of the right-most torroid on the bottom of this photo. Small blue components aligned horizontally in this snap.

I looked all over and found replacement diodes at Mouser. Ironically, they are fifty cents each, and shipping is $6 (and it's no wonder--my two diodes were shipped in a mid-sized cardboard box!).

I've been stabbing away at desoldering these diodes, but no joy. I'm taking them to my buddy's. He's got a beautiful desoldering station (no joke--I seem to use it a lot). This repair should go quickly! Along wth testing my PFR, we're doing the repair in the next couple days. Hopefully my next post will be of a successful tuning sequence with my 817 and his Gap Titan antenna.

By the way: the trip to Fish Lake wasn't a total bust. That old whip is resonant on 10m (when switched to the antenna's 40m configuration), and 10m was wide open. At 5 watts with right around 1:1.5 antenna matching, I was using PSK to contact France and several US stations. It could have been worse!

73's de K7JTO

Hendricks PFR3 build, groups 1 & 2

If you've read my other blog posts here, you know I'm really interested in light-weight portable operations. That's what led me to buy the Yaesu FT-817, but eventually I realized that was good for park bench or quick day-trip summit work, but it just wouldn't work for a long (3+ days) backcountry hike. 

I reviewed a ton of radios annd came to the conclusion that I needed to learn CW and move to a dedicated QRP rig. After a lot of research, I was about ready to buy an Elecraft KX-1 (http://www.elecraft.com/KX1/KX1.htm). It's highly rated, well-crafted, and quite popular. Then someone turned me onto the Hendricks PFR3 (http://www.qrpkits.com/pfr3.html). The owner of the company was at a QRP meeting listening to someone discuss backcountry QRP operation. An audience member asked what the best rig for backcountry is, and the presenter said it didn't exist yet. He proceeded to list out the features of the dream rig, and Hendricks wrote it all down. He and Steve Weber design, prototyped, and started selling the rig. Not only is it better designed for the backcountry, but it's also much cheaper (the PFR3 currently sells for $240).

About 3 years ago, in 2011, I ordered my kit. I think I sorted the kit the first day I received it, but that's about it. Life got very busy for me, I went through some ups and downs, and now three years later I'm finally building it. In researching the kit, I found there's very little available on the Internet on how to build this rig. If you can't figure it out in the manual, there aren't many resources other than the group. I decided to document the build process so others might benefit.

I am about 4 hours into the build, done with the first two stages.

Basically stage 1 is the LED and power switch. The receiver, stage 2, is most of the right half of the circuit board. The build is very straightforward, except for one item: there's a torrid with a 5-turn primary winding and a 40-turn secondary winding:

I discovered in the course of winding that there is only room for a 40-turn winding, but the manual calls for 40 turns followed by 5 turns. It was all very confusing, until I emailed the PFR3 Yahoo group. A group member clarified: the 5 turns go over the 40 turns. This is probably the least clear portion of the manual.

Another point of conversation: some people have had issues with torroid wires breaking due to the jostling of backcountry travel (shaking in the pack). After discussion with list members, I decided to drop some wax under each torroid. That's what you can see in the shot above. The torroid a are installed on what will be the bottom of the board.

It's difficult to tell, but the radio is powered up and showing 30.0 on the right three digits.

My kit arrived with every component, but unfortunately I lost one of the RF chokes. A list member sent me a replacement. In the lower left of the photo you can see the stock choke--it looks like a fat resistor, just below C42. In the middle of the photo, between the blue and green caps, is the replacement choke. I love the way amateurs help each other out all the time!

Just another random shot of the main board. The kit is very well laid out and goes together quickly--most people estimate 6-8 hours to build. I'm probably 4 hours in, but a lot more considering the head scratching I went through over that torroid!

The manual lists a modification to stage two which address noise in the receiver. It requires two caps to be added--one in a through-hole, and on jumping a couple pins on another component. I was in Seattle on business so I grabbed the components at Frys and installed them with Group 2.

Next step is to dial in the receiver, then build out stage 3 (transceiver). Finally, prep the case and finalize the install.