HamGadgets News » Connection Kit

February 2011 HamGadgets news

Dale — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 17:24:20 +0000

Sent via email to subscribers on 2/4/2011:

Global what? It doesn’t seem to be getting any warmer here! Last winter was one of the longest and coldest I can remember, and right now it’s 0 degrees out (that’s about -18 for you Celsius folks) with a good stiff wind bringing the wind chill down to around -25 (-31C). Regardless of Punxsutawney Phil not seeing his shadow this morning, it feels like Spring is a long way off. I’m about ready to take up a temporary VK call!

To help warm up the depths of winter just a bit, I’m going to knock a little off the price of kits and parts. From Groundhog Day until until Valentine’s Day, your shopping cart will show a 10% discount on kits and parts – that’s everything except the MasterKeyer and touch paddles.

I have MK-1s back in stock and ready to ship, so if you’ve been holding off ordering one – now is the time. Look for a price increase around the first of March! I hope to have the new firmware available for beta testing in the next week or so. Right now I am working on fixing a bug that affects a couple of logging programs that use K1EL Winkey emulation mode, as well as a straight key bug that has affected a couple of ops.

Work is progressing on the new USB rig interface. I decided to go back and re-work the design to make it easy to provide complete optical isolation between the rig and computer. This will be especially helpful to owners of some older Kenwood rigs, as well as anyone else concerned about ground loops.

Lastly, I mentioned in the email newsletter that I was considering dropping PayPal as a payment method some time this year. based on plenty of feedback from customers, I’m scrapping that idea — PayPal will remain as a payment option. If you like PayPal, please feel free to use it. If you hate PayPal, don’t use it. If you don’t feel strongly one way or the other, please consider using the secure credit card payment option if you’re in the USA. For DX customers, it will actually save me a little bit in fees if you use a credit card through PayPal – but either way is fine. Of course checks (drawn on US banks only, please) or money orders are always good.

Dayton 2010

Dale — Sat, 08 May 2010 15:15:09 +0000

We’ll be leaving for Dayton the morning of 5/12 (Wednesday), so no orders will be shipped from 5/12 through at least 5/16. I’ll start shipping again the 17th.

I will have the entire remaining stock of PicoKeyer-Plus kits with me in Dayton, and will probably sell out there. It will be mid-June before I have more. A new batch of circuit boards is on order, but I didn’t anticipate a recent bulk order and it looks like we’ll be out of stock for a few weeks after these are gone. So, if you want a PK-Plus kit you should put your order in before 5/12.

We will be in booth 482 in Dayton, so if you plan to be there please stop by and see us.

Discount specials

Dale — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 14:10:19 +0000

During the month of April, enter the coupon code “SPRING” during checkout to get half off shipping. This applies only to orders shipped to US addresses. I plan on more discount specials in the future, so watch the HamGadgets home page as well as our banner ads on QRZ.COM, Eham.net and out print ads in QST and NCJ.

And no, regardless of the date – it’s not an April Fool!

eBay listings coming to an end

Dale — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 23:57:36 +0000

I’ve been selling PicoKeyer and ID-O-Matic kits on eBay for several years now, with generally good results. They’ve sold fairly well, though to be perfectly honest I have no idea why. It costs more, because I’ve got to cover the eBay listing fees and final value fees. But, for whatever reason, I’ve had a lot of people buy from eBay auctions rather than ordering directly from the web site.

On March 30, eBay is once again raising its fees. I’m done — I won’t be listing any more kits on eBay. It’s gone far enough, and I’m not willing to be a part of making people pay more than they need to for kits. It’s bad enough that they pretty much killed off any payment methods other than their own PayPal, but now the fees have just gotten out of hand.

ID-O-Matic II to replace the ID-O-Matic

Dale — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 13:18:28 +0000

The boards are ordered for the ID-O-Matic II, and we’re down to the last few ID-O-Matic kits. I’m working on the last few changes to the firmware, trying to get it “just right”… and of course still need to write a good share of the manual. I think this is going to be a very nice step up from the original kit. A few hardware changes were needed, and I couldn’t see the benefit to keeping the ID-O-Matic and its companion Connection Kit separate any more. I’ve managed to incorporate most of the hardware features people have asked for, even a couple I didn’t think I would be able to – like adjustable audio level and de-emphasis for the audio input.

So far I’ve been pretty happy with the result. The switch to PWM audio has resulted in a smoother sounding tone, not as smooth as the MK-1 but still not bad. I’m having to sacrifice some speed; it probably won’t go to 60 WPM like the original, but then who needs an IDer to do 60 WPM? I’m working on solving an issue that slows the ID down some if high audio frequencies are used, and hope to have that fixed before the boards arrive.