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Reviews For: P5

Category: Keyers & CW Keyboards

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Review Summary For : P5
Reviews: 1MSRP: 65.00
Description:
Touch Paddle Keyer. Touch Paddles mounted on PC card plus 42 function Electronic Keyer
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.cwtouchkeyer.com/P5.htm
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
0014
K1RF Rating: 2012-07-14
Great Product Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I purchased the P5 at the 2012 Dayton Hamvention. The PC card is extremely compact, and the provided external parts (2 pots, push button, output jack, and on/off switch) are a nice bonus and excellent quality. It works as advertised and has a nice feel and is unique in the keyer realm. The keyer functions are comprehensive but require multiple menus to access all of them using various combinations of the mem push button and paddle press or press and hold. The paddles are gold plated and look really professional. I mounted mine in a Ten Tec TG-24 2-tone enclosure, ~ 4.125 x 1.750 x 3.745. Note that this unit does not have direct outputs from the touch paddles themselves. You must use it as a keyer. There are other models if you just want touch paddles.

My main niggles are the following:
1. A reverse polarity protection diode was reversed on the assembled PC card. When the unit powered up dead, I quickly found the problem and fixed it by reversing the diode.
2. The touch sensitivity pots are tiny and somewhat difficult to adjust. I used a jeweler's screwdriver to adjust them. They were nowhere close to the proper adjustment. These two things indicated to me that the board was untested or perhaps only partially tested at best.
3. The gold plated keys were very slightly misaligned with respect to one another. I loosened mounting screws and adjusted for exact alignment.

I added an external solid state relay circuit for keying boat anchors using an Ixys LCA127 solid state relay (Digikey P/N CLA180-ND). See the N0XAS Universal Keying Adapter for the concept.

I think this is an excellent product. Except for the issues mentioned, I would have given it a "5".

Sumner at CWtouchkeyer got back to me on the question of the reversed diode. Sumner indicated that The P5 I purchased was a new product for him. He received the PC cards one day before leaving for Dayton. He built up 15 of them just to have them at the show. No, he did not test them, due to a lack of a test jig and time. That has been corrected since.

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Earlier 4-star review posted by K1RF on 2012-07-13

Sumner at CWtouchkeyer got back to me on the question of the reversed diode which I mentioned in my review. Sumner indicated that The P5 I purchased was a new product for him. He received the PC cards one day before leaving for Dayton. He built up 15 of them just to have them at the show.

No, he did not test them, due to a lack of a test jig and time. That has been corrected since