Friday night / Saturday morning
My new-to-me Microcraft CW keyboard arrived earlier this week, and I had a chance today to get it out of the box and check it out.
Call it nostalgia, I guess … I owned a Microcraft Morse-A-Key CW keyboard for many years. Microcraft built a number of code and RTTY readers in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and this CW keyboard was released in early 1980 or so.
The keyboard is a very simple affair. It has no memories, and has about a 30 to 50 character buffer. When you fill the buffer, an LED lights to let you know its nearly full. It has two controls, speed and volume. If your rig has a decent sidetone, you can turn the built-in sidetone off, which is what I usually did.
The keyboard will key just about anything. The keyboard reminds me of the keyboard I used on a 1980s era Teletype machine to program a automatic DIP insertion machine. Its has a very solid feel.
On the one I owned, the keyboard felt like it had “give” in the middle, and I often considered adding an internal “leg” to give the keyboard a little more rigidity. On the new one I own, it has no “give” and feels super. The keyboard was sold with its unique 5vdc wall wart, but the seller apparently forgot to pack it. Ugh! I’ve sent him a message about it to see if he still has it. In the meantime, I’m going to try to adapt a USB cable to provide the needed 5vdc. It may just work.
I also received a Morse-A-Reader unit as well in the same auction. I really don’t have much use for this unit, but I might give it a try just to see if it works. Fortunately, the Reader has a built-in AC power supply.
HEATHKIT HP-23. I recently purchased a working HP-23 on eBay with a Buy It Now of only $59. Any time you can get a working HP-23 for under $100, I consider that a bargain! The unit came today and looks great; the seller replaced the original cord with a three-wire cord with proper ground (great idea); in doing so, he shit-canned the original cord, which was on the early HP-23 models was where the fuse protection was housed (two fuses in the plug on the line cord). While I like that he updated the cord, he did so without providing ANY kind of fuse protection for the power supply! ACK!!
I’ve ordered an appropriate circuit breaker that I’ll install in the power supply for protection. I’ve also ordered the HP-23 power supply rebuild kit that will replace all of the electronics and capacitors with brand new units. No use upgrading the supply without adding a circuit breaker, eh??
COMPETING INTERESTS. Right now, I’m spending a lot of time in Studio C since that’s where my eBay operation is located. While I enjoy working there, I also need to desperately spend time in my main shack to get things cleaned up for my Yaesu FTDX101MP station. I need to put brakes on my son’s car, so that’s probably what me and I will be doing tomorrow. Wish us luck, hi hi.