Friday, March 29, 2024
I’ve been spending as much time as I can creating new eBay listings and boxing up the items I’m trying to sell. I’ve got a couple dozen items listed now, most of them boxed. The stack of USPS Priority Mail boxes continues to grow, and I think my wife would like to see them moved elsewhere between the time I list them, box them and sell them.
Earlier this evening I cut prices on most of my stuff. All my listings are set price listings. I allow offers from buyers, and frankly, anything that looks reasonable gets a “sold” from me.
I’m still fighting this sinus infection crap that’s going on. Improving but not gone yet. Ugh.
VIBROPLEX MEMORIES. From the time I first studied for my ham ticket (I took a General Class theory class on the local community college when I was a junior in high school), I had seen magazine ads for a code key called a Vibroplex.
The ad copy sounded marvelous! Makes sending easy! The Vibroplex is easy to learn and easy to use! The Vibroplex ads going way back always show a key, most often of late, a Vibroplex Original or Original DeLuxe, and this strange wired plug next to the illustration of the key.
For many, many years, I wondered to myself, “What the hell is THAT thing?”
I had never seen a plug on any radio that looks like it would fit. Was it a necessity to have that plug for the key to operate? To “send easy?” To “make sending code a breeze?”
I wanted a Vibroplex nearly from the moment I saw the first magazine ads. It just looked cool. It was an entirely mechanical method of sending dots and dashes. No electronics needed, just a little practice.
One thing I noticed as I scanned old issues of QST (old as in 1930s), occasinal letters to the editor voicing complaints about bug users, and their propensity to send slow dahs and extremely fast strings of dits. Hiram Percy Maxim, writing as “The Old Man,” called this effect the “Lake Eerie Swing.”
It wasn’t until I finally bought a Vibroplex did I really and truly understand what The Old Man was talking about.
Sending dits at the same speed of dahs — about 13 wpm — was damn near impossible with a stock Vibroplex. I came up with various homebrew version of the Bug Tamer Vibroplex eventually sold in order to have my dahs and dits at least send in somewhat similar speeds.
I still have a boat load of keys to list and sell. I’m cleaning up a spot in the old shack — Studio 1 — to do the listings from so I don’t have to do it on the kitchen table. A suggestion from my wife that I’m going to make good on. Or else, hi hi.
73 es CUL …. de KY4Z …. SK … SK …. (dit dit) …..