Sunday, Sept. 27, 2020
Tonight I purchased the assembly and instruction manual for the Microcraft Morse-A-Keyer CW keyboard that I purchased recently.
When I tried the unit out, it operated fine — until I hit certain keys on the keyboard. For example, “C” would send two complete characters when the key was hit once. I found a couple other keys that did the same thing. I really don’t believe the issue is the keyboard; I’m thinking its the electronics. Without a manual or schematic, I can’t check to see if there’s a common component(s) among the keys that sent multiple characters.
There are number of adjustment pots on the PC board, though without a schematic I don’t know what they control. I’m thinking there’s something going on with an oscillator or the timing setup. This keyboard doesn’t depend on the Curtis CW keyer chips for its operation, so it must use some sort of diode matrix or conversion of ASCII to CW character. Anyway, I’ve ordered the manual for the Morse-A-Keyer.
The Morse-A-Keyer was available in kit form as well as factory wired. I don’t know if mine is factory or a kit version, but hopefully the manual and schematic will shed some light on getting it back in shape without extra characters.
At $205, the factory-wired version wasn’t cheap. When I get the manual, we’ll see what we can see.
NATIONAL NCX-500 INTEREST. I’ve gotten several inquiries into the NCX-500 I have listed on eBay. All of them ask about the matching power supply; I’m sad to report that the power supply was the first thing to sell. But you could run the NCX-500 on the power supply for the NCX-5 and the NCX-200, its just that the high voltage is less.
I’m considering adding a third table to Studio C … I need another table to set up / play / repair / adjust these radios. I have to have one table for packing up eBay sales; one table for an operational station, and a third table for tearing into a radio for testing and repairs.
BUG STORAGE. I recently bought two heavy duty shelf units and I think I’m going to wind up placing them in Studio C for storage of my CW keys. I’m thinking that I need to rip up some plywood and craft some wooden storage cases for these keys. It would be a safe way to store them and stack them on a shelf unit. I have a number of keys I’m going to wind up selling on eBay, so I need to start sifting through the collection.
73 es CUL …. de KY4Z …. SK … SK … (dit dit) …