Wednesday, June 26, 2013, 10:30 a.m. — Amazing what you can dredge up with a little effort cleaning up …
I don’t have a photo of my ham shack posted on my website, and for good reason — I’m waiting for the day it looks presentable for a photograph.
My wife waved the white flag years ago — there’s no use trying to insist on a well-organized, clean ham shack. She simply doesn’t consider the shack part of our house when it comes to cleaning and organization. As you might expect, I deeply appreciate her tolerance of my shack.
The rules are simple: If it is radio stuff, it goes in your room. If anyone in the family is cleaning up and finds “stuff” of mine, by default it is placed on my desk, in my chair or on the floor, so I either sit on it, trip over it and lose it.
Actually, the rules are even more simple: Just bring whatever it is and I’ll take care of it (even if “taking care of it” means sticking it under my bench).
I had a question about one of my keys from one of this blog’s readers, and I have been unable to place exactly where I have that key stored. That basically is what prompted my cleaning efforts, which mostly focused on removing a kerosene space heater that took up residence in the shack two winters ago(!). I had to dig it out from two years of accumulated “stuff,” some of which I hadn’t seen in a while.
HELLO, BEAUTIFUL! I suppose one of the benefits of a cluttered shack is finding things you aren’t looking for. It was nice to get reacquainted a number of my keys as part of my cleaning process. I’ll try to write about all of them over the next few days.
KATSUMI EK-108D KEYER. The Katsumi keyer is one of several designs marketed by Katsumi. It is not an iambic keyer, but operates more like a bug, with a single lever that makes dots and dashes. I picked up this little jewel from eBay quite a while ago, but I’ve never had it operating. The power jack is an 1/8-inch mono phone plug, and despite my best efforts this afternoon and evening, there isn’t a spare 1/8-inch phone plug anywhere in my stash. I need to stop by Radio Shack and pick up a few.
Two other keys worth mentioning are a mid-60s Vibroplex Original DeLuxe that is missing the thumb and finger pieces and weights, and an expertly homebrew bug that features a pivot resembling a Lightning Bug/Champion in its triangular shape, but is fashioned from a heavy phenolic substance. It is the first bug I’ve seen with a plastic pivot frame. One would think the frame might be fragile or flexible, but it is rigid and sturdy, and the key works very well.
I still have some keys stored in their shipping boxes (one might assume my favorite colors are USPS Priority Mail red, white and blue!); another incentive for cleaning out the shack is to develop a space efficient way to display more of my keys and eventually, either cull or store others. Some I may want to keep, some I may sell. I have shelves of ham gear new, old and really old … perhaps I should sell all of that gear save for my main rigs I regularly use. Or store them until I decide what to do … hmm…
73 de KY4Z SK … dit dit