Sunday, Sept. 30, 2012 — Over the past two weekends I’ve been helping my family reclaim one of the rooms on the first floor of our home. It started out as the kids’ play room. Then over time, we began storing stuff in there. When we had company, it was often easier just to shove stuff in there than find a place for it.
The past couple of weeks have unearthed some gems I knew I had and a few I had thought forever lost … call it my personal “Bermuda triangle” of ham gear, hi! Actually, if you are a George Carlin fan, he once did a routine about the place all the “stuff” we lose actually goes. For a number of years, this room was that place where “stuff” ended up living.
AND THEN THERE WERE … FIVE? While sorting plastic bins full of various and sundry crap, I ran across a Priority Mail box that had some permanent marker noting it contained a 100th Anniversary Vibroplex bug. Huh?
I didn’t believe the labeling (sometimes I reuse boxes in order to safely store something I don’t want to get damaged), so I opened the box (re-opened it). Carefully packed in small bubble bubblewrap was indeed, an absolutely mint condition 100th Anniversary Vibroplex bug, serial no. 100A-236. Where did this little beauty come from? Well, after seeing the box and the key, I remembered.
Back in May 2012, I did an inventory of my 100th Anniversary keys; three of which are in the original shipping boxes, and another is “loose” and unboxed. NR 236 was the very first one I bought, and this is the key that the seller said has a duplicate serial number. The seller put me in contact with the owner of the other NR 236 at the time … I don’t have his identity now, that was on a computer that long-since crashed.
So now, I have five 100th Anniversary keys total. I know I was considering buying one with jeweled pivots, and with the later base finish (a duller, weathered look that appears more resistant to scratching), but I’m more likely to simply but the parts and retrofit one of my existing 100th Anniversary keys. I need the pivots and the pivot pin to swap out of the existing parts, and of course, the red plastic “jewel.”
All five of the keys have the same “problem” with the nameplate — the definition of the lettering is poorly defined. I know I’ve theorized about this before, but I’m betting the issues with the stamping process probably let Scott Robbins to abandon the brass plate rather than adapt it to the company’s then-new Knoxville home. I can imagine that retooling stamping dies would be a headache — and an expense. While I tend to believe the brass tags age better, the truth is that how a key is used and cared for ultimately tell the tale. Bugs haven’t had to “work” for a living in the same manner the early pre-WWII keys did.
BC-348Q IMPRESSIVE AT 70 YEARS YOUNG. As I wrote in an earlier entry, I have been spending some quality time with my Wells-Gardner BC-348Q, and I’ll have to say that I continue to find myself impressed by this humble receiver.
I have used it primarly on 75 and 40 meter SSB and CW … frankly, its more stable than the Hallicrafters SX-130 that sits on the shelf above it. Saturday afternoon I decided to take the ol’ girl up to 30 and 20 meters. I’m using about 40 feet of electric fence wire as an antenna — without an antenna tuner to pretune the wire — and I found the receiver provided enough sensitivity for 30 CW and to tune across 20 meter phone.
The first thing I ran across tuning “up” from the bottom of 20 were RTTY stations … dozens of ’em, diddle-diddling away. I haven’t done an RTTY contest for years, and forgot this was the CW WW RTTY contest weekend. I finally hit the Extra portion of the phone band, and tune across some decent 20 DX, past the maritime mobile net and the county hunters net. I was pleasantly surprised how stable the receiver was on 20, which is close to its upper frequency limit of 18 MHz. Unlike the Hallicrafters, I could tap on the case of the BC-348Q and not detect a single waver in the stability of the received signal.
I tuned around a while on 20, the dropped back to 30 and 40. Not bad for a receiver this dang old!
G’night, and pleasant radio dreams …
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