So hang on to your wallet!
I spent yesterday morning at the Algonquin Amateur Radio Club’s flea market, held in a pair of cafeterias inside Marlborough Middle School in Marlborough, MA.
It’s the first major flea market/hamfest of the year up he-ah in Noo Englahnd. And while I did spent a few bucks on a nice set of headphones for the shack, it’s becoming clear as I get out to more of these that a big part of the draw is making eye contact with folks usually limited to RF contact.
A Vibroplex Original Standard, circa 1963. I picked up this bug off of eBay last year and finally got around to cleaning up a week or two ago. While the base shows some "antique" dings, the chrome still takes quite a shine! The "tail"? A pendulum extension with weights to s-l-o-w down the bug for us newbies.
My ham-radio Elmer, the late, great Jim Hatherly, WA1TBY, was a die-hard Morse-code man. He learned the art in the merchant marine during World War 2 and he only got better with age.
No electronic sending for him. Instead, he used a semi-automatic key, or bug, and could rip along at high speeds with the best of them
After several years using straight keys, I bought a used Vibroplex bug off of eBay to see what all the fuss might have been about.
I’m hooked.
Sending readable CW with a bug is not as hard as I thought it would be, and frankly, the combination of sending automatic dits and individually crafted dahs keeps a operator on his or her toes throughout a chat over the ether.
For the uninitiated, the operator moves the bug’s arm side to side via the paddles up front. Each dah must be made with individual motions. But the dits? Those come automatically, via a contact on a U-shaped leaf spring, attached to a spring-flexed pendulum. Move the arm in the dit direction and the dit contact bounces against its contact post until you’ve sent all the dits you need or the pendulum runs out of energy, whichever comes first.
Trust me. “All the dits you need” comes way first!
I’ll share my meager (so far) experience in the hope of encouraging more hams to give a bug a try…more than once!
What 5 watts through an attic dipole might get you on 17 meters from MA with a sunspot number of 39, courtesy of Ham CAP.
Who among the ranks of QRP operators hasn’t heard the question: Can you really get out with that?
We low-power enthusiasts nod, tell a few tales (including tales of the ones that got away if we’re really on the up and up), and reassure our inquisitor that, yes, you, too, can make enough contacts to keep yourself busy as an amateur-radio operator.
Even so, sometimes it’s useful, even inspiring, to take a broader look at what QRPers can accomplish when they know their gear and how to ride the (solar) winds to take advantage of the best path to that distant ham-radio station they are trying to reach. (I know, mangled metaphor and run-on sentence!)
Wonderful handcrafted tie, a Christmas present from my daughter Jessica. She said something about the need to honor the geek within. Would that I had a tower like that!
