Sunday, July 10, 2016 — Its early in the morning so I’ll go ahead and post a short update. I have an open house to attend today, plus travel to 
Lexington for a visitation for the death of the wife of one of the radio station owners.
I’ve been poking around on eBay and have picked up a few things CW-related.
SPEAKING OF THE NYE MASTER KEY. As I mentioned in my last post, I have one of these keys … somewhere. Well, lo and behold, tonight someone had just listed a Master Key at a bargain price. I couldn’t pass the key up! I’ll admit that after all this time of ragging on the Master Key I thought it was worth revisiting my thoughts on it — which I will do once this key arrives.
GOLD BUG. Of course, the Bunnell Gold Bug I mentioned previously in this space; it arrived in fine condition, double boxed and carefully packed. The dot contact post is loose and to tighten it I’m going to need to separate the key from the base. Just haven’t gotten around to doing that yet. I haven’t touched the key as far as cleaning it yet, and probably won’t.
KENWOOD TS-690S. It was kind of a lark, but I saw a Kenwood TS-690S — the TS-450S with the addition of the 6-meter band — up for auction with a fairly low Buy It Now price. The rig wasn’t very clean; there’s actually some rust on part of the case. The seller has 100 percent positive feedback. Hmmm … I have been wanting to buy a TS-450S, and I had to return the one I bought at the end of March.
Anyway, the seller also was accepting offers on the radio, so i decided to send a low-ball offer (which was promptly refused but countered). The seller was willing to deal, but this was a 28-day auction. I decided to walk away from it … for about a week. Late one night I decided to send a second offer out of the blue, slightly better than my last but lower than his counter. Long story short, the offer was accepted, and the TS-690S should arrive next week.
No, I don’t need the radio, but I have wanted a TS-450S since I sold mine years ago. I’m looking forward to checking it out when it arrives.
HOMEBREW FYO-STYLE PADDLE. Another purchase that was a spur-of-the-moment thing was this homebrew FYO-style iambic paddle. The 
same seller has two similar keys for sale. The guy who made it did a first rate job. I’ll write a review once I get it here, though admittedly, I already have several FYO-style iambic keys. But you don’t find too many people who try to make their own version of the FYO key — and do such a classy job. Again, more details to come.
CONTEST WEEKEND. I’m ashamed to admit that I don’t have a clue what phone or CW contests are going this weekend. I checked into the Georgia CW net tonight and noticed contests on both phone and CW. I didn’t have a lot of time to spend on the air, but the contest didn’t affect the net — until it ended. Then a contest station fired up close to the net frequency. I didn’t have time to contest.
Maybe next time.
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