Bruce,
Thanks for the keyer design, on my future list of projects to be sure!
As a note, a while back I experimented with several USB shields for Arduino like??and?
The first pretty much worked out of the box and I seem to remember that I got the second one working t0o. They both have some sample keyboard reading software. Proved that to my satisfaction that it basically worked, but didn't stress test it at all.
I used it with a mini wireless keyboard:
Just a thought if anybody wants to take your design and add USB (wired or wireless) connection to your keyboard design. Definitely more expensive than your solution, but the wireless mini keyboard has interesting possibilities for SOTA, etc.
73
Mark
AJ6CU