Greetings from my frosty hill overlooking the frigid waters of Cox’s Creek. We’re in the midst of a November snow, the first snowfall of the year — and an early one at that.
I figured I would check in with a post to cover my most recent eBay acquisitions, most of which I can’t justify to my wife (but when did THAT ever stop me?? Hi Hi).
ANOTHER TUNER? Yep, another antenna tuner. But this one is different and it caught my fancy. If you’ve read my blog in the past, you may be aware of my affinity for homebrew items — code keys, antenna tuners, etc., etc.
This tuner caught my eye mostly because of its price (cheap!) and its unique construction. The design follows Lew McCoy’s Ultimate Transmatch design circa July 1970 QST, which has been the basis for many an antenna tuner in the past 50-plus years.
In fact, when I pulled up that QST article, what did I find — but an nearly identical spitting image of this tuner in McCoy’s article, which describes it as the “Novice,” a lower power version of the Ultimate Transmatch.
This tuner doesn’t have a turns counter, but depends on a logging scale thru which you view the roller inductor and note the contact wheel’s position. According to McCoy’s article, the roller coil on the low power transmatch was scavanged from a military surplus ARC-5 transmitter. I still see ARC-5s at hamfests.
Unlike McCoy’s article, the ham who built this tuner added a balun, though I’m not sure if he intended to make it 4:1 or 1:1 given the fact it appears to have five bifilar windings rather than 10 windings per the QST article.
The rear panel of the tuner has been modified a couple of times, and appears to be set up for coax output or for a single wire antenna. I’m either going to rewind the balun to be a 4:1 or scavenge an existing low-power balun from an old tuner. I’ll also install a couple of ceramic feed-thru insulators.
NIKEY KEY. My most recently acquired Morse key is a later Nikey CW key. The Nikey is recognized as the first iambic key. It was first manufactured Lefor Industries in New Canaan, CT in 1962. It was later manufactured by Productive Tool Co. of Stamford, Conn. beginning in 1963. The key I acquired was built in Stamford, CT. The key is in great shape.
BAND CONDITIONS. The 80 CW band conditions continue to be marginal at best, and have made it tough for my ability to check in on my CW net. Perhaps I need to set my sights on the Kentucky CW Net, at least I might have better luck copying the NCS, eh?
CW KEY HOLY GRAIL? The closest thing to the CW key “Holy Grail” just showed up on eBay some 24 hours ago — a beautiful, later production Martin Autoplex. I don’t think I’ve seen but perhaps one other ever for sale on eBay, and that was more than a decade ago. The bidding after 24 hours was already well over $500, which comes as no surprise. The seller doesn’t seem to know the significance of the key he’s selling, but I suspect he’ll be in for a very pleasant surprise when the final bid arrives in just under six days.
ON THE PROJECT LIST. I still have yet to repair my main dipole that serves my main shack; once I get the antenna repaired, I’ll get to go back to the shack to operate without having QRM from “Dancing With The Stars.”
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