Quotes from the Bencher website at http://www.bencher.com/whichpaddle.html:
"Frankly, the BY series paddle, like a fine sports car or a surgical scalpel, does not respond well to the heavy physical input such operators are comfortable with. But that is how old time CW operators, trained on the bugs and single lever paddles, learned their craft. If you are one of these operators, for you Bencher offers the innovative new Hex Paddle. This paddle too is fully iambic, and very nearly as responsive as the BY series paddles, yet is also designed to stand up to the most physical of operators, thanks to the floating instrument grade ball bearing races and magnetic paddle return, not to mention the massive base." "The BY series, thanks to its unique pivot-pin bearings, is simply the most responsive iambic paddle available today." ---------------------------- Now that is funny! So an operator who is comfortable with a old bug that uses simple pivot bearings is going to notice a "floating instrument grade ball bearing races"? I can understand how an operator who learned CW on a keyer may have developed the delicate touch of a watchmaker and may notice the fine differences in bearings and tensions, but I can't imagine a bug operator noticing the difference between a properly-adjusted set of pivot bearings and "instrument grade" bearings. A bug operator is someone who learned to send on a key that requires him to launch a heavy pendulum hard enough to beat out a nice string of dits and then stopping the dits at just the right instant by slapping the swinging pendulum against a mechanical damper with a "clank", and in between make dashes manually by mashing the lever against the dash contacts at just the right time. There's a lot of "finesse" in using a bug, but not much in the way of a "watchmakers" touch. Using a bug is a very a *physical* activity compared to keyer paddles. Ron AC7AC _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
