Kit by Jackson Harbor Press - Built by Steve, N9OH

I built a PK-3 memory keyer on 19-Apr-2003. It took only a couple of hours to build the keyer and then a couple more to fit it into its custom enclosure: the ever popular Altoids tin! In fact, it probally took longer to prepare the enclosure than to build the keyer!

The components. There aren't a lot! Two separate pkgs were ordered - one containing the keyer and one containing some hardware such as the pot (for speed adjustment), the momentary switch (mem switch) and the keyer jacks.

Ahh yes. The parts to the keyer. Yikes... not much here. Notice the PIC chip in its electrostatic pad. This little chip is a computer in itself!

This fuzzy picture shows the initial steps of soldering the PC board. No surface mount components here... but the caps are pretty small!

Wow - that was fast. Simpel assembly and we power up the board to test it out. Amazingly enough, it works!

Now I start working on the custom enclosure. Its an Altoids tin. A popular enclosure used by many homebrew and QRP fanatics.

Its complete. I messed up on drilling the hole for the potentiometer, but the washer of the pot covers most of my mistake. OH well, thats why its called AMATEUR radio. :)

Finished! Here is the keyer in the tin, next to my cw paddles. I will, of course, get a small pair of portable paddles, such as the BullDog paddles, at the next hamfest. These are much to large and heavy for portable use!