Cootie Cable

Part of my amateur radio adventures for 2024 is to become a better CW operator. What I mean by that is I want to do more than than POTA/SOTA/Contest exchanges. When I first started out 28 years ago, that’s what I did, called CQ and had a conversation. In addition to becoming more conversational, I wanted to try my hand at straight or mechanical keys. I recently ordered a sideswiper and a bug but they won’t be here fro another 2-3 weeks. I also thought about the money I had invested in paddles.

This thought process took me down to thinking about how to convert iambic paddles into side swipers. All it takes is shorting the dit and dah paddles together and setting your radio to a straight key. I wanted to make this easy. I wanted to be able to use all of my paddles on all of my radios as an iambic paddle or a sideswiper. Since this is my first journey into straight or mechanical keys, I wanted to be able to easily convert back and forth.

I made a short cable that goes between the paddles and the radio. It’s a simple operation. Starting out with plug nomenclature.

The tip is the dits and the ring is the dahs. The sleeve is the common. I had male and femlae 1/8″ stereo cables in my parts bin so I took my multimeter and coded the wires to the plugs. Basically you tie the common to the common and all the dit and dah wires together.

Twist them together, solder the joints, a little heat shrink and viola! Cootie cable. It weighs 0.5 ounces and will work with all of my radios. Now I can swith from Iambic to sideswiper in under a half a minute and use all of my paddles. See the included video that shows how it works. 73 – Scott