This key was supposed to be my solution to poor performing keys…well, today I was 16 QSOs into a POTA activation and the little key suddenly started “ditting” nonstop. I power down the rig, take a look at the key and find the “dit” lever is pushed over against the contact arm on the key.
In this photo you can see the “dit” lever shifted to the center.
As you can see below, somehow the lever is off center and not returning anymore. so I shut down the op and packed up to go home and see what happened. I needed to do some other chores as well so I made the decision to take the key home to where I had a better assortment of tools to be able to repair it…if possible.
Once home I took the key down to my workshop and removed the cover assembly to reveal how the key is made. I found a ultra simple design that is efficient and minimalist in nature. This also makes for a clean layout and an easy to trouble shoot system. The lever arms dont have any springs of any kind, but rather the lever arms have been thinned just ahead of the mounting block enough to allow them to flex easily over to the contact arm. Simple and elegant.
Below I am pointing out the contact that is shorted. The key is upside down here, but you can see the contact pad touching the center column. This doesn’t make sense as the arm is not broken nor is anything seemingly out of alignment.. The key worked perfectly up till this point too, so I looked very closely for a crack in the arm, but it isn’t broken at all, in fact it looks perfect.
What I found upon closer inspection is these screws I am pointing out below are in oversized holes drilled in the block. It appears this is done on purpose to allow for centering of the lever arms in the housing once assembled. Simply loosen these two screw and turn the block till both levers are equally spaced from the center contact arm, then retighten the screws and your good to go.
Here is my conclusion. I must have bumped the end of the lever I am pointing at in the photo below, as this is the only way to shift the block off it’s axis. By hitting the end of the paddle arm I could feasibly transfer enough energy to the block to shift it. By just pushing the levers in the normal travel directions it cant do that as the frame has hard stops in place to prevent it from over travailing. So at some point I shifted my key in my hand or bumped it into something in the truck to cause this failure. In other words, I did something to it, I really don’t know what I did, but I must have hit it on something. I works perfectly now as I took it to the QTH and got on the air with it this evening and worked several POTA contacts and I plan to redeploy it on the next outing. Time will tell if I am too rough handed or if this key will become my defacto travel key.
So if you get one of the CQ Gemini keys, just keep in mind that it is a great key and wonderful to use, just be sure to protect the end of the paddle arms from bumping into stuff and it will work for a long time. When stored, this is a non-issue as the paddle is completely inside of the metal housing and cant run into anything. I can still recommend this key for a travel key, I just learned something about it today that I wanted to share with all of ya’ll.
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72
David
WK4DS