From the “That’s where it was” department: Clean-up yields misplaced goodies …

Christmas Eve, Dec. 24, 2016, 9:30 a.m. — My attempt to check into the Georgia CW net last night on Christmas Eve Eve didn’t pan out out like I hoped. The band was long, and unfortunately, the NCS was the closest station to me — too close. I copied most of the Georgia stations fairly well, just not the NCS.

When I was NCS of our state emergency net, it wasn’t unusual to have similar conditions this time of year. I remember a couple of times I needed relays from Michigan and northern Ohio stations to get all of the stations checked in.

1938 McElroy MAC KEY Deluxe, S/N 854.

PACKAGE ROUNDUP. While the weather was relatively warm yesterday, I got my son’s help cleaning out my Jeep. As a journalist, I have always been guilty of keeping a pretty trashy car interior. We never use my car to go anywhere as a family; I cart my gear — computers, camera bags, tripods, etc. — around … I like to call it my mobile office (my wife suggests its more like my “mobile trash can,” which isn’t far from the truth at times).

In the back of the vehicle, I’ve been carrying around several eBay packages I had received and just never carried inside. Not that I’m hiding eBay purchases from the XYL of course (ahem!) … but I left them in the car until I had time to put the items to use.

1938 MAC KEY DELUXE S/N 854. One of the boxes contained a 1938B Mac Key Deluxe, serial number 854. This was a key that was not on the Tom French McElroy serial number list, so I was happy to acquire it — kind of. The key sold cheap and for good reason — it has seen a hard life.

Name plate is missing most of the paint.

For starters, the keying lever is broken at the main spring. This is allegedly a deluxe key; however, it has considerable wear with lots of paint loss around the T-bar, and so far no sign of marbelite finish. I haven’t cleaned the key up, and I’m wondering if a good cleaning won’t reveal some original finish.

The key is mostly complete, just worn. The large style metal nameplate is in good physical condition, though it has lost nearly all of the black paint. If the main spring is repaired, the key only needs a finger and thumb piece and the return spring to be operable. The key is missing the circuit closer switch and the contact bar that the switch connected with to close the circuit. There’s also no dot stabilizer on this key; dot stabilizers were standard equipment on these keys.

This is one key I would like not to leave in “as-found” condition. We’ll see.

Not my particular key, but this is what the ARRL Centennial key looks like. The gray box at right is where the engraved callsign goes. The engraving actually is in the base, not on a plate.

ARRL CENTENNIAL KEY. This one I had forgotten was in the car — the Vibroplex ARRL Centennial iambic key. I bought this key from Scott Robbins at Vibroplex when I saw he had it listed on the site’s page of used keys. The key was never sold, but it was the demo key that traveled with Vibroplex to hamfests. The Centennial key had the buyer’s callsign and a serial number engraved on the base (only 250 were sold); mine has a bogus call and random serial number, according to Scott. The key is in good shape, just been handled regularly on the hamfest circuit. I missed the boat on buying one when they were announced, and like most other anniversary items of this nature, they were quickly snapped up by hams around the world.

I like the look and feel of the Vibroplex iambic key, but I have never used one regularly in the shack. I cut my iambic teeth on the Heathkit HD-1410 (still have my original one) before I obtained a Bencher BY-1, and honestly, the BY-1 has been my gold standard for iambic keying.

Back in the Days of the Ham Trader Yellow Sheets and hamfests that actually sold ham stuff, it was tough to find a Brown Brothers iambic. But the Bencher line was plentiful and cheap. As I’ve mentioned before, I bought the BY-1 when I sold my boat anchors (Hallicrafters SX-101A, HT-36A, HT-37 and SX-111) to finance the purchase of a Yaesu FT-757GX. The BY-1 allowed me to take advantage of the Yaesu’s built-in keyer, which was quite a deluxe feature to me.

What would SKN be without operating my first straight key?? While I was enrolled in a Novice class, I bought this Heathkit HD1416 code oscillator kit that came with the ubiquitous plastic-based practice key — a key that’s been used by fledgling hams and CW ops for more than 70 years to learn the code. For most of those years, the design didn’t change much; in recent years — as in the case with this key — they have added plastic bosses that help hold the metal pivot frame in place (the u-shaped pivot from was always the key’s weak point … once the mounting tabs were bent apart slightly, you could have your key fly apart in mid-QSO. Been there, done than. Click to enlarge the image.

STRAIGHT KEY NIGHT PLANS. My wife has promised that we would go spend New Year’s Eve at her work friend’s cabin on a lake in the middle of nowhere. Sounds like a great place to operate from for SKN, doesn’t it? Sadly, it doesn’t sound like CW is on the menu; we’re going to be there with her friend and her husband, and probably some other folks I don’t know. As much as I enjoy SKN, this trip isn’t at the top of my list. We are more of a stay-at-home and watch the ghost of Dick Clark ring in the New Year from Times Square couple. I don’t really drink anymore, so getting blasted isn’t on my to-do list.

Those of you with XYLs probably understand what this is about — my wife doesn’t often come up with events that she wants to attend, since she’s pretty much a homebody like me. So despite my reservations about an overnight trip with people I don’t know, I have registered no objections outside this little slice of the blogosphere. And frankly, we both have pushed her battle 4 years ago with cancer out of our minds  — at least to one another. Internally though, I cringe at every cancer treatment commercial I hear. Life is so fragile and our time together is so fleeting … I’m not going to say “no” to something she wants to do, despite my wish to operate SKN from home.

The plan is to leave early in the day, so I won’t have any operating time New Year’s Eve. My goal is to get home New Year’s Day and have a few hours to get on the air. The crush of stations will have subsided some by then, and a lot of stations will be on the air ahead of time testing and making ready, so perhaps I’ll get some operating time in anyway.

The TEMPO 2020 and the HT-16/HG-10B station will be on standby, along with my FT-2000 for SKN. I have my first rig — a Hallicrafters SR-150 transceiver — I could use as well, but unfortunately it really isn’t a suitable CW rig. The SR-150 was apparently Hallicrafters’ answer to the Collins S line of SSB rigs, with the emphasis on fone rather than CW. The SR-150 has no CW filtering at all, and no options to upgrade this deficiency. It also has no built-in sidetone (I’m guessing that’s why you were supposed to use the HA-1 TO Keyer with your SR-150, hi hi).

73 es CUL de KY4Z SK … dit dit