Very good. This could be a wind-up from you but I can’t resist responding. As a fellow blackbelt pedant myself I’m with you and understand the subtle point you are making, i.e. the iambic action is achieved only when the twin paddles are used in conjunction with the rig’s e-keyer. But – Canute like – you are swimming against the tide of conventional usage as the term “iambic paddles” is widespread in the literature with amateurs, equipment dealers, etc. So, going with the flow, I use twin/dual/iambic interchangeably in this context.
A counter pedantic claim could be there’s no such thing as an iambic keyer. The e-keyer is capable of correctly producing the iambic six: C, F, K, L, Y, Q (or plus R makes seven) only with the correctly-timed switching inputs from the twin paddles.
So, strictly speaking we can talk only about iambic-capable e-keyers and twin-paddles. It takes a skilled operator plus paddles & keyer to be iambic.
I get that and there are loads of other examples of where strictly it’s wrong. Two I use that seem to annoy people are CW meaning Morse code and ATU where people think it should be AMU because you aren’t tuning an antenna.
I needed to scratch my radio itch yesterday and I’m trying to get my yearly total of activations up to around 50.
I’ve been thinking about trying some PP3 powered radio for a while. Recently I measured my LA1KHA Challenge batteries and both #2 and #3 have failed. I’m wondering if the cold temperatures in my outdoor shack have killed the batteries off?
I had to nip to Settle yesterday for a few things and I thought I’d pick up a new 9v battery. I decided to go for a value battery this time so I picked up an Eveready Gold branded battery in Booths for the price of £2.25.
I didn’t have a lot of time when I returned home but I did manage to squeeze in a quick activation of White Hill G/SP-006 before having to pick my son up from the school bus.
I’d taken my home brew RockMite based rig for 15m (RM15-9V) and home brew dipole. After a couple of minutes of calling I was answered by José EA7GV and received a 519 report from the south of Spain. In less than 10 minutes, I’d got 6 QSOs in the log with my 150mW. The surprise, and last, QSO was with Dick, W2WC in NY state. Dick was running 10w from an Elecraft KX3 to a 3 ele Yagi.
My copy came through the letterbox this morning and I did notice that. Doesn’t annoy me at all; it just gives me a sense of intellectual superiorority.
