Every year I look forward to the Iowa QRP Convention in Sioux City. It has a nice flea market and a great lineup of speakers at the QRP forums. Another big attraction is the group building session on Friday night. John Burnley (NUØV) and Mike Fitzgibbon (NØMF) organize and run this event and they do a great job. Experienced and inexperienced builders alike gather in a conference room and build a kit start to finish in an evening. It is a lot of fun and provides many with their first ham homebrew experience.

The PIXIE 2 kit was selected for the 2002 building session and John and Mike thought it would be fun to have a simple key to go with each kit. The key would allow the builders to test their completed kits and maybe make a few QSOs with other builders in the room. John came up with the idea of using a paper clip for the key. He went to Home Depot, picked up a few parts, assembled a prototype and brought it to my shack to show me. It really worked great and I was so impressed with it that before I knew what I was saying I had volunteered to build 25 of them for the building session.

Below are some more pictures of the key, and a parts list. It is easy to build and works remarkably well for such a simple key. The bottom contact "strike" is a round piece of copper clad board (Manhattan pad) with a small hole in the center. The wire for this contact extends through the hole from the bottom and is soldered on the top. The bottom contact assembly is epoxy glued into a counter bored hole the base. The wire runs through a small channel and out the back of the key. The wire for the other contact connects to the paper clip at the hold down screw and runs through a small hole in the base to the channel where it joins the other wire and exits out the back. With a pair of needle nose pliers you can bend the paper clip up or down to set the contact spacing where you like it.

Side View of Key

Keys for the Iowa QRP Convention