G3VGR Palm Mini-Paddle Mod      

The Palm Mini-Paddle is a fine product for portable operation, being of robust construction. Unfortunately, the cable is somewhat flimsy. It uses a 3 pin connector with heatshrink tubing around the plug. The wires occasionally break at the connector, which can be very frustrating in the field. After a few occurrences of this problem, I decided the best option was to dispense with the connector completely. The photo opposite shows the original white socket in the body of the paddle.
I pushed the pins out of the original connector to preserve maximum lead length. Next, a piece of fibreglass pcb material was cut to be a tight fit in the cavity vacated by the connector. The PCB was etched to have 3 lands, one for each connection. A dual-core screened cable & the original paddle connectors was soldered to the 3 pcb lands. The cable is clamped between the pcb and the paddle body. This acts as an adequate strain relief. The picture shows the pcb, which is blue coloured fibreglass. No cable problems have been experienced since the modification was made.

I would thoroughly recommend the Mini-paddle. It is available from Palm Radio
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