I was excited by reports of a new Palm Paddle key being available, so I decided I’d have to get my hands on one.I had a chat with my XYL and it was agreed that I could be allocated funds to buy myself a treat 
As luck would have it, Richard G3CWI, the guy behind SOTAbeams gave a presentation about portable operating at my local radio club a few weeks ago, and he brought along a selection of his products, including some of the new Palm keys along with the Code Cubes.
(BTW - the talk is highly recommended, just the right balance of information without overkill for those with only a passing interest in portable ops)
I selected the black Pico Paddle (to match my FT817 and original Mini Paddle) and parted with the hard won cash. My initial impressions were that you don’t get an awful lot for your money! I had been aware of the high suggested retail price for quite some time and had come to terms with it, so I was pleased to be able to buy the key from SOTAbeams at substantially less than RRP.
Richard had pointed out at time of purchase that the key is actually wired different to that conventionally used, requiring use of a firmware setting available in most transceivers to swap over the ‘dit’ and ‘dah’ paddles. My only commercial rig is an FT817, the rest of my radios are home brew or built from kits with no firmware options to swap over the key response. My main reason for buying the Pico paddle is to use with my KD1JV Designs Mountain Topper QRP 2 band CW rig. I didn’t really want to start changing the wiring of the key sockets in my rigs so the easiest option was to make up a custom cable for the paddle key.
My original ‘Mini’ (Pico’s bigger sibling) Paddle’s cable failed during a very cold winter activation (the cable got brittle and snapped!), so I ordered a batch of 3.5mm plug to 3.5mm plug stereo audio cables for very little money and picked up some 3 pin molex type PCB connectors from Maplin at 99p each. I simply chopped off the plug from one end of the audio cable and soldered on the 3 pin connector instead. Using some heat shrink to tidy things up a bit, the new cable looked very professional and as a bonus was much thinner and more flexible than the original cable. I’ve been using my home brew cable for over a year now with no complaints.
I had a spare stereo 3.5mm cable left over from the ‘Mini’ paddle project, so for the new ‘Pico’ key, I simply ordered a 2.5mm stereo plug and soldered this on, swapping over the tip and ring connections. My Pico key is now wired in the ‘conventional’ way with ‘dit’ at the tip and ‘dah’ at the ring. Using a cable already terminated with a 3.5mm plug results in a neater looking cable as moulded-on plugs always look better!
I tried my Pico out for the first time on Monday from Arnside Knott G/LD-058 with my MTR (Mountain Topper), I was very impressed with this little key. I didn’t get the hang of it straight away, although I’m sure with a couple of activations I’ll be fine. The main difference I find between the Pico and the Mini is that it’s much harder to hold the smaller key in your hand whilst sending. I think I’ll find some way of using the magnetic base to secure the key to a board or similar for sending.
I think I’m going to be using the ‘Pico’ a lot, I love the fact that it hardly weighs anything and it fits in a standard Altoids tin along with the cable, logging pencil, and, all important, pencil sharpener! I haven’t weighed the supplied case yet for comparison with the Altoids tin, but it seems silly to have such a tiny key in the standard ‘mini’ key case, it looks lost in there!
Conclusion
The Pico seems like a very good key, weighs hardly anything and looks very nice, but is rather expensive and like the ‘Mini’ paddle, the cable situation is not ideal. If you’ve got a commercial rig or high end kit (e.g. Elecraft) then you’re OK with standard 3.5mm to 2.5mm cables, but otherwise you’ll have to find your own solution.
73,
Colin
M1BUU
and yes, it snowed down to 1500m last night.
