Thursday, Feb. 17, 2011 — I just wrapped up a late night/early morning QSO on 40 CW with Ed, W7GVE in Golden Valley, AZ. Ed was using a straight key and I had one of my Vibroplex bugs on the desk (the one at right).
The key is my 2006 Vibroplex Original Standard. It’s not a flashy key, but it plays very, very well. I bought this key and one identical to it (and about the same age) late last year. I was using my homebrew bug tamer, as we were working in the old portion of the 40 Novice subband — 7100-7125 kHz. We were working at a comfortable speed, not too slow, but comfortably slow, if that makes sense.
Ed is 70 and his shack includes a Yaesu FT-450 with an OCF dipole running 65 watts. Sigs were respectable, but we both took a couple of deep fades with the QSB and propagation; fortunately the band held up, and by the end the sigs were back where they began.
The portion of 40 CW where I worked Ed is occupied most days with slow and medium-speed CW QSOs, most of them by members of the SKCC (Straight Key Century Club). Ed and I exchanged SKCC numbers during the QSO. Ed told me he would like to have my FT-2000, but — in his words — “I want to stay married, hi hi.” The FT-450 sounded fine, without a hint of chirp. He was running a straight key.
We chewed the rag for most of an hour. He finally asked me “is it after midnight at your QTH?” No, it was after 1 a.m.! He didn’t know where my QTH was, so I had to give him some landmarks. His is located west of Kingman, Ariz.
The bug performed flawlessly; the truth is that it was a joy to operate, but aren’t all my keys?? (hi!) Some of the really old ones don’t have the ease of movement this one does; I’ve wondered what kind of reconditioning of the pivots would fix that. I’ve avoided putting any oil or lubricant on the pivot points because those actually need to make an electrical connect to ground to complete the circuit for the dits and dahs.
This was a much-needed “recreational” QSO for me; I hadn’t had a nice long ragchew in quite a while.
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