Although I've been licensed since 1965 and able to put some sort of HF signal on the air during almost all of that time, my activity level was relatively low (a couple of hours a year) from 1977 through 2011 due to career and family. For the past two years, I've been semi-retired and getting my activity level up, but I'm frustrated that my CW sending without mistakes has plateaued in the low 20s whereas my receiving ability is still over 30 wpm. At first I thought I was just out of practice but, believe me, I've done a lot of off-the-air practice.
I have a nice K8RA dual lever paddle that I use with my K3 and the KXPD3 for my KX3, which of course is an iambic paddle. I have the same problem sending with both and have experimented with a number of settings. The KXPD3 was initially worse, but the Elecraft mod kit was an improvement so it's now on a par with the K8RA paddle. Recently LA3ZA posted here and included a link to his excellent blog. There I found an article on single-lever paddles and their use by many high speed operators (tusen takk, Sverre). < http://la3za.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-advantage-of-single-lever-paddle.html> I see, too, that Begali's HST model for high speed work is single lever. This led me to think that maybe what's caused my sending to decline in the last 35 years is that I've gotten old -- more specifically, that I've gotten arthritis which is fairly pronounced in my right forefinger (it now takes a "dogleg" to the left and there's a nodule on the joint nearest the tip). So my ability to squeeze the paddles as fast as my "CW brain" is working is probably impaired over what it was back in the day. So that leads to some questions. Does this theory make sense to anyone else? Has anyone switched from iambic to single-lever because of this? Improvements? Has anyone put a non-iambic paddle on Elecraft's wish list? Does anyone besides Begali make a single-lever paddle for the KX3 (I'm tempted by its Adventure Mono model)? 73, Dennis Haarsager, N7DH Hillsboro, Virginia ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
