Friday, Feb. 10, 2018 — The Skillman “coffin” bug I recently picked up on eBay has quite a nice provenance with it that I discovered quite by accident.
As you can see, the key had the owner’s callsign written on the bottom, W7LNG.
The key belonged to Robert Leroy “Bud” Larsen of Medford, Ore., and in my research its clear that Bud was one of those men who was a ham’s ham.
Bud died May 13, 2017. A local newspaper article about the club’s FD effort noted the club planned to honor Bud by call its 2017 Field Day effort “the Bud Larsen W7LNG Memorial Field Day.”
Bud was born in 1932 and got his first ham ticket as a teen in the late 1940s. He was a one of the early members of the local radio club, the Rogue Valley ARC in Medford, and was active in the club and held a long list of offices through the years. He retired from Naval Reserve.
According to some notes about Bud on the club website, his favorite activity every year was Field Day. Apparently, he began working Field Day in the 1950s and participated every year up until 2016 when he had some health issues sideline him.
I also found that Bud was very active in a number of contests and enjoyed homebrewing QRP and “glowbug” equipment. He was active in the 1929 Bruce Kelly QSO Party.
I think that Bud was a CW fan and key collector too. A family member has — probably his son — has been listing his stuff on eBay. That stuff consists of mostly tubes, crystals, meters, all sorts of things. In addition to the key I bought, I have since picked up a copy of Tom P’s Telegraph Collector’s Guide book worth the money that was in Bud’s collection.
After doing my research about Bud, I decided to set aside my 100th Anniversary Vibroplex at the operating position a side and to use Bud’s Skillman bug for a while to honor Bud’s memory and his dedication to ham radio, I’m going to use his bug for a while. It just seems like the right thing to do.
I have been meaning to post this for several days, but it was the report of the passing of an old ham radio friend and fellow key collector that prompted me to get off my duff and get this done. I have another write-up I need to put together about my old friend Joe, K4DZM.
73 es CUL DE KY4Z …. SK … dit dit ….