Sunday, Aug. 23, 2015 — I’ve been tuning the band today, and not finding much of interest beyond copying the mail on some CW QSOs between 7.1 and 7.125. One of the gents was running a Swan that sounded superb. It made me want to fire up one of my rigs — my Heathkit HW-16, my HW-8 or the Tempo 2020 transceiver. The Tempo is a really, really sweet CW rig, too. I’ve probably made more CW QSOs with it than I have phone.
I was fine tuning a 1938B McElroy Mac Key (standard) and continue to have issues with occasional scratchy dots. I’m going to clean up the contacts again, and I may “borrow” the dot tensioner from one of my DeLuxe Mac Keys to see if that helps.
I have been thinking of the keys I’ve owned and used going back to my first days as a ham — actually going back before I got my ticket.
In 1985, I wanted to get my ham ticket, and was planning to take a local Novice class that was going to begin the first of the next year. I had been getting Heathkit catalogs, and so I ordered the Heathkit HD-1416 Code Oscillator kit. The kit came with a CW key — their version of the Ameco K-1, otherwise known over the decades as the “practice key.”
It’s plastic, it’s cheap, and it probably helped a bazillion amateurs learn CW. It isn’t the most durable key you’ll ever use, but it defined “entry level” for most of us who weren’t introduced to CW via the military.
I built the oscillator and in no time I was playing around with Morse code that I didn’t know (beyond “SOS” of course). I sold the oscillator some years later at a hamfest, but I kept the key.
One of the things I quickly learned was that a CW straight key can’t really be used unless its mounted to something. I found a small cutting board that we were never using and screwed the key to that. In fact, its still attached to the same cutting board.
It’s called a practice key for a reason — its not really the best key to have for on-air QSOs. The “U”-shaped saddle that serves as a pivot frame for the keying lever is prone to bending, which adds lateral play to the key. The key lacks true contacts, instead its simply the plated metal of the lever hitting whatever the lower contact is made of. It works, but is prone to getting dirty. As slow and as poorly as I was sending as a Novice, scratchy dots were the least of my problems.
I lusted for the Ameco K-4 — the infamous Japanese “ball bearing” key. I finally got one, and it was quite a step up — until I decided to check out the ball bearings. As a car guy, I was accustomed to ball bearings in a race, not lose ball bearings in a cup that fell all over the floor! It took the help of some strong magnets and lots of cuss words for me to retrieve the little buggers. I have NEVER EVER taken another ball bearing key apart since.
NYE MASTER KEY. Another early acquisition was a used Nye Master Key. The Master 
Key is a very nice looking key without exposed contacts. I loved the looks of it, and it was made by the Nye Viking company, which made lots of keys.
The only problem was how the key operated. It lacked the same tactile feel of the traditional CW key. The lever simply pushes a plastic dowel down onto the business end of a microswitch, closing the switch. This sounds good in theory, but the Master Key had a flaw inside its nicely finished base — the metal the switch was mounted flexed, which gave the key a mushy-as-hell feel. Another problem I had was the microswitch on mine would stick in the closed position from time to time — not a good thing to happen when you’re tuning a tube rig and the key jack is in the back panel.
I was tempted to ditch the key at the next hamfest (this was in the days before ebay), but I didn’t; instead I located a replacement microswitch. The key worked fine, and it still does for slow speed CW. One benefit is that it keeps you safely away from key line voltages on some of the older rigs. But I never got past the still-mushy feel of the key. I have it in a box somewhere. Oddly, the reviews on eHam speaking glowingly about the key. I would say the reviews critical of the key are ops who are running 13 wpm and higher. Just a guess.
HEATHKIT HD-1410. My first HF rig was a Hallicrafters SR-150, which I ran on 10 SSB right after Novice enhancement was approved. It wasn’t a very good CW rig, but I soon acquired my next 
HF rig, a Heathkit SB-102.
The SB-102 is one of my all-time favorites, and I regret selling mine to this day. With the 400 Hz CW filter, it was a good CW rig. I worked lots and lots of CW with that station. Soon after I picked up the rig, I purchased a used Heathkit HD-1410 keyer (shown at right), which matched my SB-102 in color and style. With the external speaker and the matching station monitor, I was well on my way to having my own “Benton Harbor S Line” HI HI!
I still have my HD-1410, and it was my introduction to iambic keying. It did a great job with the SB-102, and helped me improve my CW speed dramatically. It lacks the precision adjustments of most other iambic keys, though it does offer some methods to “dial it in” to suit the operators’ fist. I eventually dialed mine in so was almost as smooth a key as the later Bencher BY-1 I purchased later. Setting the paddles was a compromise, because you could never get both paddles to have the same feel. I still use the key when I have an older tube rig I want to use with a keyer.
Some years ago, an IC in mine failed. Fortunately the quad NAND gate IC was not a one-off or custom design IC, and it was a matter of replacing it with a new one. It has worked like a champ ever since.
… AND FINALLY, A BENCHER. Around 1989 or 90, I sold all of my boat anchor gear — including the SB-102 — and purchased a Yaesu FT-757GX from Larry, NE8V at the Hoosier Hills hamfest. I think I paid the grand sum of $600 for it. It was my first all solid-state HF rig, and I still own it today (despite its shortcomings).
In order to make use of the Yaseu’s internal keyer, I picked up a Bencher BY-1 iambic paddle. It took some time to get aclimated to the Bencher, but it grew on me quickly, and I swore I would never use a straight key or other iambic keyer.
There’s not much I can add to the virtues of the Bencher key; I have two or three, including one BY-2 that is probably as much a shelf decoration as anything else. Its hard to go wrong with a Bencher.
The BY-1 was my go-to key for many years, even as I added other keys and keyers, and remains my first choice in iambic paddles.
MFJ MISTAKE. I had been wanting to go to sending CW with a keyboard. My mentor had one of the older MFJ CW keyboards – the MFJ-494 — and it was built like a tank and a feature-rich one at that. It was out of production, so I opted to buy an MFJ-452 — an standalone keyer that used a computer keyboard.
It was a very feature-rich keyer, more so that the MFJ-494, and I was excited about running it. But it turns out the keyer was susceptible to RF — if you have any stray RF in the shack, the damn thing would blank out or reboot in the middle of a transmission. After screwing up QSO after QSO — and adding toroid after toroid to my cables and wiring — I simply gave up. I put the thing on eBay and said good-freakin’-bye and good riddance. I see them on eBay from time to time, and it makes me ill to think of the crap that one of those put me thru before I ditched it.
The experience strengthen my resolve to located the older MFJ CW keyboard, the MFJ-494. Wow, what a product! Metal case, well shielded, great keyboard, works like a champ. They don’t come up for sale on eBay very often these days, and after buying one, I decided to get a second one. I ran them off and on but then my bug collection pushed them aside. As a journalist and blogger, I keyboard shit all day long — at this point, the last thing I want to do is use a keyboard when I’m playing radio. Give me a bug and I’m happy.
I wish someone would tell Martin Jue that there’s still a demand for those old keyboard, given how expensive they sell for when they come up on eBay.
That’s it for this trip .. more to come … 73 es GUD DX de KY4Z SK … dit dit