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Reviews For: K1EL WKUSB-SMT keyer

Category: Keyers & CW Keyboards

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Review Summary For : K1EL WKUSB-SMT keyer
Reviews: 13MSRP: $89 USD
Description:
WKUSB-SMT is a surface mount version of WKUSB that has all board mounted parts pre-soldered and tested. Final kit assembly involves just adding a few through hole components
Product is in production
More Info: http://k1el.tripod.com/wkusb_smt.html
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
00134.9
K0INN Rating: 2014-10-28
A+ product Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
No "rough edges" at all on the physical package or functionality of this product. High quality components and case. Even the speed pot works very smoothly. I can't think of any improvement short of the ability to control the internal speaker volume, but that should be fine for most people.

Very good instructions for assembly. Took me about 1.5 hours but I moved very slowly and carefully.

If you have a variable temperature fine tip soldering iron the soldering job is much easier. There are some excellent youtube videos that show SMT soldering techniques. Basically, you apply a high quality flux to the contacts and the solder flows to the contacts and they do not bridge. This helped me a lot when I started doing this type of kit building.
W9KVA Rating: 2014-08-01
High Quality Kit Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
First time kit builder and chose the WKUSB-SMT as my kit. Ordered via snail mail and received in short order. I was a little intimidated with some of the solder functions but decided to give it a go. Overall the kit quality was excellent and I was able to complete the kit in short order. I did goof up the solder on the USB joints (..the instructions give fair warning on this..) but managed to pull everything together.

The kit tested and worked flawlessly right out of the gate. I've already had it running with great results. I love the WKTOOLS program that connects to the keyer via USB to program the memory banks and set other functions on the keyer.

The kit quality is first rate. I would have rated this kit a five, but the USB jack connectors were the most difficult part of the kit for me. I had to redo them twice due to my lack of experience with an iron. This would be a very quick build for an experienced ham, but I spaced my build out over a few days to go slow and make sure that I performed everything right.

No buyers remorse here..excellent kit and works well for contesting as well as regular everyday use.
K1RF Rating: 2014-07-17
Outstanding quality and features Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
This is an ideal keyer for field day and other contests requiring macro controlled keying from a logging program. The quality of the case and PC board are outstanding with excellent mechanical fit of components to the PC board and PC board to case.
While all features are too numerous to mention, some of the key ones include:
- Direct USB/virtual com port interfacing eliminating the need for a USB to serial dongle with recent computers
- When using macros, accurate characters are formed in the keyer itself and do not depend on computer-created dots and dashes which are poorly formed
- direct power from USB interface or 3 AAA cells
- Field upgradeable firmware
- You can specify min and max WPM for the speed pot
- solid state relay outputs handle positive or negative voltage with 2 key and 2 PTT outputs

I have previously built the K12 keyer and the newer K16 keyer and was very pleased with those, but this keyer is a great performing, easy to build, nicely packaged keyer with standalone or USB virtual com port control and optically isolated outputs