OM (hamspeak for "old man", in this case, "old men" for the non-hams),
If any of you think doubleguns, especially SXS's are on the way out, CW is going obsolete faster joining Latin as a dead language. With only 40 characters, CW is truly a language of its own. Gunter, Gene, Shotgunjones, these are fascinating stories, especially the ones relating to military or intelligence services. That old “boatanchor” Collins is some radio, Gene, and is still highly sought after by collectors and operators. Shotgunjones, my old buddy, N2KZ, summers in the UP and participates in the Old Goats net on 75 meters I believe. Karl was my on air code mentor-buddy when I first went on the air 14 years ago. Back then, CW was required to be a ham on all bands. Karl and I communicated during grey line (dawn) in CW when "skip" propagation would carry my low power signals 5-10 watts from my Elecraft K2 from Georgia to NY. We did this until my proficiency in sending and receiving was about 18 wpm. Oldtimers cringed at the speed requirement being reduced from 15 wpm to 5 wpm to obtain a general license. I was one of those hams who got in under the 5 wpm bar. My Navy Flameproof straight keys were made by JH Brunnel and Bendix for the USN which later sold the keys to the Mexican railroad which still communicated via CW through the 1970s and even later into the 1980s if memory serves. They had a stockpile in NY which were owned by a former employee whose son owned the successor corporation. I bought several from him and they were still in the old canvas covered sealed copper foil pouches. I have one still in the pouch unopened.
Gene, I believe the "leg key" depicted in your excellent article is the old J-38 which is often copied and sold by others. Lots of hams cut their CW teeth on it. Here are some of my keys that I mentioned. A Bendix Navy Flameproof is on the board. Nearest it is a South African Special Forces key. The Japanese key is easy to spot. The German keys from WWII are to its right. One of the Altoids boxes to the left atop my Belize license is a cw transceiver I made from surface mount kits with plug in band modules of 20, 30, 40 and 80 meters that are in the other box. The battery is on the lid. The radio with what appears to be a “sunburst” on the operating panel is the same kit, but made out of a diy graphite enclosure and the design is from a cut out neck tie. It was a contest radio I used when I participated in a “weight per contact” contest. I won a couple because of its extremely light weight. The battery was half the size of the one in the photo. I could run it at 3 watts for the one hour duration of the contest. These are fine little radios designed by a ham, KD1JV, who specializes in trail radios. These are his ATS3 series transceivers. With 14 volts in, the output was 5 watts. I worked Siberia with one of them from the Georgia coast. The Siberian contact was most likely a tribute to the sophistication of equipment and his antenna being able to hear my pipsqueak signals. I ran dipoles and doublets as antennas. Quality of the photo isn’t great, but it’ll have to do this a.m. Gil
