Monday, Dec. 3, 2018 — I know I sure didn’t need to purchase this key, but curiousity got the best of me. The red 1983 vintage Vibroplex Iambic key shown here caught my eye recently on eBay.
This time of year, the term “Red Rider” always makes me think of the famed “Red Rider BB Gun” of “The Christmas Story” fame. But this holiday season, it also represents one amateur’s efforts at refurbishing classic CW keys.
Bill, WA4DDH, wrote in his listing for the key I purchased that he has refurbished 11 of CW keys during 2018, giving them all unique nameplates as part of his 2018 Red Rider series of refurbished CW keys. The listing notes that the refurbishment and unique nameplates makes these keys collectible. I’m not sure about what true collectors might think about that, but I’m sure we all have different definitions of what makes a key collectible. Certainly if you look at scarcity alone, the Red Rider keys are one-off products. But collectibility also requires there being a demand. That’s the tricky part. I have plenty of potential collectibles that no one wants, hi hi!
On inspection, the key looked as clean as a new Vibroplex Iambic. The paint job on the base has a hammertone type of finish, and it really looks top notch. I’m not a big fan of red as a key color, but it works with this one. Bill took the 
original Vibroplex nameplate, polished it up, and mounted it on the bottom of the key. He has his own unique nameplates for his Red Rider keys. The label appears tob e silkscreened aluminum, and it includes the key’s original serial number and the month and year, as well as noting its status as one of Bill’s “Red Rider” refurbished keys.
Since I purchased the iambic, Bill has listed several other refurbished keys in the Red Rider series, including an MFJ-564B paddle (essentially a Bencher clone); a Buzza brand straight key (manufactured in Australia, its basically the same as other manufacturers’ Triumph-style straight key (i.e., Speed-X, Bunnell, etc.), and the Chinese K4 style straight key.
The Buzza straight key is an usual find in any condition. It is mounted on a red painted wooden base. I have bad memories of my own experiences with the MFJ Bencher clone key, so I’m unlikely to say much positive about about the key. The Chinese key has its original label on the bottom, and the Red Rider nameplate on top.
OTHER EBAY ACTION. Other than the “Red Rider” Iambic, my other ham-related purchases include another Heathkit SB102 (very nice condition); and a Mon-Key electronic key. Now I didn’t really need the Mon-Key, but the price was right — $16 and change. The key — like all of the ones I’ve owned over the years — has a broken (open) resistive line cord, so the key doesn’t currently work (“current” pun intended, hi hi). I plan to do what another enterprising ham did with one of the Mon-Key keys I own that work — add the appropriate value power resistors to replace the resistive element.
The issue with the Mon-Key is that it only has three tubes, and the filament voltages don’t add up to the line voltage. In the 1940s, it was a fairly common practice to use a resistive line cord to “make up” the difference when the tube filament voltages fell short of 120 volts. The line cord method allowed manufacturers to build radios without the use of a transformer, offering considerable savings in the costs of building a radio.
The resistive line cords were also alleged fire hazards too; the voltage they helped dissapate was done so in the form of heat, particularly if the user coiled the excess cord tightly, or placed it under a rug.
The best method to lower the line voltage is with the use of non-polarized capacitors. Unlike power resistors, they don’t generate heat. The one Mon-Key I own that works DOES use power resistors to drop the voltage; it doesn’t generate much heat, and I have several sets of power resistors to use in some of the other Mon-Keys I own. One of these days I plan to operate with a Mon-Key for an extended period of time (provided the clacking of the relays doesn’t drive me insane first), just for the retro-ness of it. The Mon-Key has plenty of room to mount the power resistors, and I want to see if they wind up getting excessively hot in the process.
ELECTRONIC STORAGE. The most recent item that I’ve purchased on eBay has been a 6 TB external drive. In my professional life, I shoot and edit a great deal of video and still images, and archiving all of that video eats up gigabytes of storage. I have several 1 TB external drives floating around but what I’ve wanted was a rather massive hard drive. 6 TB is about as close as I could get in the “massive” territory that was affordable.
I really considered a RAID array, but most of those systems get into some bucks. My use of the archive drives is very intermittent. I only do it a few times a year and mostly when the main hard drive on my primary PC starts getting full. I considered installing a 6TB drive in the PC, but I’m out of available drive bays. My PC already has its primary drive, plus a CD/DVD, and two additional storage drives — one 2TB that’s full, and a 3 TB drive that’s filling up rapidly. Of course, if I move all of my backed up files to the 6TB drive I can replace the 2TB and 3TB drives with larger internal drives. That’s to come, hi hi.
SWR ISSUES. Now I seldom have issues with SWR with my wire inverted vees. But a couple of nights ago, I was hearing all sorts of noise that sounded like it was being generated by the antenna grounding up intermittently. When I checked into my CW net the other night, it confirmed an issue with the wire antenna serving the library, as the SWR — typically flat — was jumping around in sync with the static as I was transmitting. Its a little disconcerting to see the red HIGH SWR letters blinking as you transmit, but I had to deal with it as I checked in and out. Today I had to run out for errands and saw one end of the antenna that was formerly terminated at the barn was laying over the farm truck, which may explain the intermittent grounded antenna. I need to give it a closer look later this week.
I’ll report back with my findings … until then 73 es CUL … de KY4Z SK SK … (dit dit)