Palm Paddles

Following his Hoove catastrophe yesterday, Tom M1EYP dropped his paddle off last night for a “repair”. His brief was clear in that he did not mind what level of butchery was required in that it did not work and thus if it was ruined in the effort, he would just buy a new one.

The weak point in the design seems to be the connector at the rear of the key. The contacts appear to get corroded causing dots or dashes to fail. The socket is glued to the key body and was easily prised away. Removing the contacts was less easy and required the plastic housing of the socket to be destroyed. I then cut the metal parts back and tinned the three leads. The corresponding pins on the plug were tinned, splayed slightly apart and soldered to the leads. The heatshrink sleeving on the plug was trimmed in such a way that it sat snuggly in the area left by the socket. When reassembled, this holds the plug in the body of the key and thus provides strain relief.

To get the key reassembled I used some silicone grease on the plug assembly to make it slide a bit better against the outer cover of the key. The cable is remarkably firmly held and the whole thing looks good (on the outside anyway). The key now works fine although the slide in/out is not quite as good as before. Total time to repair about 10 minutes.

No doubt Tom will thoroughly test the repair over the next few weeks.

73

Richard
G3CWI

In reply to G3CWI:

Hi Richard

I must admit to being a bit apprehensive about the connector at the rear of the Palm Paddle Key. When extracting the key from the case to the fully retracted operating position it is tempting to push on the cable which would put pressure on the plug.

Glad to hear that you effected a repair.

73 Roy G4SSH

In reply to G4SSH:

Thanks for the tip Richard, I think I will soon be hard wiring my palm paddle because I am getting intermittent dash problems with mine. It’s the only weak point to a fabulous /P paddle in my opinion.

73 Mike GW0DSP

In reply to G3CWI:

It’s a standard 0.1in Molex housing. To remove the contacts from the shell all you need to do is depress the tongue through the hole in the side of the shell. The contact will then slide out. Assembly is the reverse, slide the contact in and the tongue will pop up into the cutout in the shell locking the contact in place. You can hear a tiny click when it slides home.

The shell is Molex part 0022011034 and the pins are 0008700056.

Crimp connector http://www.molex.com/molex/products/datasheet.jsp?part=active/0008700056_CRIMP_TERMINALS.xml&channel=Products&Lang=en-US

Shell http://www.molex.com/molex/products/datasheet.jsp?part=active/0022011034_CRIMP_HOUSINGS.xml&channel=Products&Lang=en-US

As to whether this is the right connector to use is another question!

Andy
MM0FMF

Just seen this now (7.48pm).

Richard - many thanks!

Guess it’s my round. Fancy a beer tonight?

Tom