Tuesday, July 4, 2017 — After my recent post about the rare Brown Brothers ES model — single-lever keyer — I received an email from author and key collector Ed Goss, N3CW. Ed forwarded an article he wrote detailing some of the rare Brown Brothers keys, including the ES model.
As noted in his email (and in his article), the ES model is indeed rare, but not the rarest Brown Brothers key produced.
Per Ed’s article, the rarest Brown Brothers keys aren’t actually keys, but keyers. The photo accompanying this post is from Ed’s article showing two prototype keyers that are based on the CTL-B combo paddle/straight key on a special base that includes room for the Accu-keyer circuit board. The bases on the two prototypes differ in size and arrangement of the controls. Both prototypes are in Ed’s collection, and among the collecting community, there are no known others like them that exist.
OTHER RARE/UNCOMMON BB: EARLY CTL. Another uncommon Brown Bros. (uncommon to me, anyway!) was the fact that the early CTL keys were manufactured using the existing BTL paddle bases. The base was turned 90 degrees, which placed the terminal strip for the wiring connections on the right side of the key. The terminal strip lacked a fourth terminal, so a ground terminal was added to the top right rear corner of the early CTL keys.
As Ed notes, the company later created a unique base for the CTL that included seperate terminal strips for each key at the rear of the base. There were probably quite a few of these manufactured.
MAGNETIC BTL VARIANT. According to Ed, Brown Bros. experimented with using magnets rather than springs on its BTL paddle. The experimental keys never went into production.
K9YA NEWSLETTER. I need to give a plug for The K9YA Telegraph newsletter.
The K9YA Telegraph is a free, monthly, general interest amateur radio magazine read by hams in more than 100 countries. Many of the articles are connected to CW and Morse code keys, as well as general ham radio “stuff.”
I’ve been a longtime subscriber to the Telegraph, and I find that I read the Telegraph cover-to-cover — something I can’t claim I’ve done with QST in many a moon. Ed’s article about the more uncommon Brown Bros. keys was published in the K9YA Telegraph.
Visit www.k9ya.org to check out sample issues and subscribe.
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