Friday, Jan. 14, 2022
I’m enjoying spending some time each night in Studio C with my 1970s vintage station. If the CW band isn’t crowded, I’m just fine with my Kenwood TS-520S.
I have the damn CW filter installed, but it isn’t working. I suspect the filter isn’t properly soldered, so I may have to tear into the rig again to doublecheck.
I absolutely HAVE to have some sort of CW filtering … so I think I’m going to be prepared for whatever eventuality. I recently purchased a VECTRONICS (MFJ) Super CW filter kit. Its an audio filter with three different width settings. It uses two op amps and a handful of discrete components. I think I’m going to install the board in one of my old MFJ enclosures (once I gut it). In fact, I’m thinking of cutting down the original enclosure to more of the size the CW filter needs.
Now in addition to the CW filter kit, I just won a bid on an old MFJ 752 dual tunable filter. I’ve had a couple of these and ended up selling them. One of them didn’t work right, the other had been hacked on. This one looks mint and unmolested. I’m hoping I can get one of these three filter options online.
Tonight I used my TS-520S with the external VFO. I took the VFO apart a few nights back and cleaned the contacts — the function switch, the RIT pushbutton and the RIT control, as well as the octal plug contacts for the cable. When I first tried the VFO, the RIT didn’t work. It took some Deoxit to get everything working again.
KEYS, KEYS PLEASE! Speaking of keys, I just sold a couple of bugs via eBay, with plenty more left to sell. I’m going to keep a handful of keys, but sell the rest that I’ve accumulated.
I’m still on the fence about all the homebrew bugs I have — some of them are truly works of art. The rest will likely find new homes.
Right now my iambic key of choice is the original (i.e. OLD) style Kent Twin Paddle key. When originally released, this key had angled contact arms that were very different that the current design. This key is still a straight up winner with me. More about what I like in iambic keys in another entry … for now, 73 to all ….
73 es CUL … de KY4Z … SK SK …. (dit dit) ..