Repairing a CW minipaddle

 Type "CW minipaddle" and choose image at google and you find all kind of minipaddles. I found mine on one of the Chinese web stores on the net. Advertised as Mini Morse Code Key CW dual paddle with magnetic base. When it arrived and tried out I was disappointed because immediately a fault appeared. Touching the paddles the "dot" was alright but the "dash" was hesitating. I couldn't even key my own callsign. So I decided to see what I could do to track down the fault.

Luckily the magnetic base was something separate and not mounted yet. First thing I did was open the housing and spray everything with contact cleaner. It did not improve anything, I had to continue my search.

The construction is quite simple, may be too simple. This is not a begali key, you cannot even compare it :-)

I suspected a bad contact, this is the middle axle. I cleaned it but don't know why because the "dot" did well. I had to search for the fault on the "dash" side.

The contact on the "dash" side. I cleaned it because it did look dirty. You still see kind of a black spot in the center. Everything was mounted together and...... it even got worse. Measuring with the multimeter there was a large resistance when closing the contact. What the....

Next thing I measured was the wire between the contact and the plug to the "radio" key input. I measured a large resistance and when moving the wire it went to zero ohms. There had to be a break in the wire. So I soldered a new wire.

But after I mounted a new wire there was still a lot of resistance between the contact and the plug contact. After all the contact did not make good contact with the solder lug. I made the lug somewhat ticker with solder and pushed the small nut, in which the contact is screwed in, on the solder lug with force. I hot glued both nuts to the surface of the paddles to be sure this will not happen again. 

It was a long search for such a simple device but I finally have a nice mini paddle now which I will use for practice when downstairs in the living room. The nice thing is that it is very quiet and not annoying for others in the room.

I'm not shure if I will put the magnet on. I'm just holding it in my left hand and key with my right fingers. I see a lot of POTA activators doing the same thing.