Thursday, March 24, 2016 — Haven’t had much time to play radio or work CW, hoping I will this weekend, but with it being Easter, well, it just depends.
I’m going to post photos of my new-to-me 1935 McElroy Mac-Key. I’ve only really had time to unbox it and shoot photos of it. Its in the shack, but hasn’t made its way over to the operating position.
We have had thunderstorms rolling through the area tonight, and I decided to forgo the CW net given my disdain for filling the headphones with lightning crashes.
I was comparing the 1935 key with the 1936 key I’ve owned for years. The big change of course was the elimination of cast posts that were made part of the base in 1935; in 1936 the eliminated the posts (or actually reduced them to mounts for the connecting contact bar that completed the circuit when the lever touched the dit or dah contact.
The early Mac-Keys have such a thin T-bar they almost look spindly. They’re strong no doubt, but it just doesn’t have the same balanced look of the later keys. The keying lever pivots are also fairly convoluted on these early keys. My ’35 and ’36A keys have the same style pivot. They also have the same type of brass nameplate, though on on the ’35 mounts lengthwise rather than across the base of the bug from left to right.
I’m also not sure the damper on the ’35 is original. The other ’35s I’ve seen have similar dampers, but it isn’t anything like the more complex one on my 1936A.
