01/02/2008 | W1AW As the newly-appointed Contest Manager, I thought it would be fun to activate W1AW for Straight Key Night this year. My decision was spontaneous, so I didn't get clearance to actually transmit from W1AW. Instead, I set up shop in the ARRL Employees station W1HQ, and made a handful of QSOs from there.

After years of using iambic paddles or a contest logging program to send CW, it was time to return to my roots. I have an old Radio Shack straight key I used as a Novice from 1982 - 1984. It's been sitting at the bottom of a box in my closet for a long time, and has definitely seen better days. Still, it was fun to revisit my early time as a ham, and I was able to recall many CW QSOs I made with my HW-101 and a random wire antenna back in my Novice days.

I worked 5 stations in my one hour on the air, mostly in the southeast. Ran about 100 watts with a dipole on top of the building at about 50 feet or so.

Hope everybody had fun!

73,

Sean Kutzko,
ARRL Contest Branch Manager -- KX9X