This morning, I decided to take the new box that I had acquired and remount my K1EL keyer into it. The new box is somewhat larger, so it actually has space for all five of the possible dedicated buttons that the K1EL supports, instead of the mere three that I had haphazardly bored into the previous incarnation. I was a bit more careful to make sure that there was sufficient internal clearance. As it was, I still had a single minor issue: the input jack can actually make glancing contact with the button cell. A quick fix was found however, I simply stick a piece of post-it note to the jack, and that was enough to break the contact.

I didn’t have time to wire up all the additional switches, but they are at least all mounted, and maybe next week I’ll get them all wired in. I’m quite pleased with the overall result this time: I don’t think I’ll need a third try. 🙂

Addendum: I realized yesterday that I didn’t have a complete drill set anymore. I was in the neighborhood of Harbor Freight, and picked up one of their cheap 29 piece sets. I was going to drill a 1/4″ hole, so fetched out the 1/4″ from my new set, chucked it in the drill press, and…

It was bent.

I have gotten smaller diameter drill bits that were bent before, but not 1/4″. Annoying.