Keys at the ready for SKN, but few QSOs so far …

Monday, Jan. 1 2018 — Happy New Year and happy Straight Key Night to all.

After nearly a month, I’m still licking my wounds from my seller disappearing with my vintage autographed McElroy codes chart. I did get a refund, but as I wrote last month, I would rather have had the poster than the cash. Such is life (and eBay) I suppose.

For SKN, I pulled out my 100th Anniversary Vibroplex Original and a nice Speed-X Model 500 bug. I did not get a lot of time last night on 80 CW; I copied several QSOs and enjoyed hearing some nicely sent code with J-38s, etc.

My prep for SKN also included unboxing this very nice McElroy A-400 that I acquired from an eBay seller who was listing items from the estate of Tom French. I took time to clean the contacts and adjust it. It has a very nice feel, for some reason it has a lighter feel that the typical Mac-Key … or perhaps that’s just my perception since I haven’t been operating a bug much lately.

As you probably already know, the A-400 was the McElroy bug that lost the “ears” on the T-bar pivot frame. I’ve always wondered why at some point, Mac continued to cast the base of these keys. My guess is the castings were less expensive, though it seems to me that the A-400 could have duplicated in brass in an assembled key at a lower cost. Of course, at the time, a bug was like a carpenter’s plane or mason’s level — just a tool. The A-400 is in “Studio B” in our library, and I lack a cord to put it on the air for SKN.

Back to SKN …. Tuning around last night, I heard one of my friends from Tennessee, W4DAN, was in QSO with a couple of different guys. Danny was booming in, 10 to 20 over S9. While waiting for Danny to finish the QSO, I received an SOS from my son regarding my wife’s laptop. Our daughter’s wedding reception is this coming Saturday, so my wife’s use of Pintrest is off the charts as of late, and restoring her access there was the No. 1 most-wanted country on the DXCC list of wedded harmony. Happy wife, (reasonably) happy life.

Danny was gone by the time I returned to the shack. I also paused long enough to listen to Neil Diamond croak “Sweet Caroline” in bitterly cold temps on one of the New Years TV broadcasts. Apparently I should have watched CNN, where one of the networks hosts (stationed in Colorado) was wearing marijuana leaf earrings and handling bongs and lit joints. Smoke ’em if you got ’em at CNN. But poor Neil, by the end of the song, his mic hand was shaking, and I’m reasonably sure it was the bitter cold, and not Parkinson’s.

I’m hoping to get back to the shack later today. I have appointments early tomorrow, so I won’t be up late.

73 es HNY de KY4Z … SK … dit dit ….