01/03/2009 | K5BZH This is my fourth year to participate in Straight Key Night. It has proven to be a rather entertaining event with the various keys, a lot of vintage radios, and some good "war" stories.

Speaking of stories, I have one to tell. A few weeks ago Ken Burch, WB9TRY, a friend of mine from Austin, gave a rather unique key to me, one from the WWII era that was made for the Czechoslovakian military. Ken had acquired the key at Summerfest in Austin from a vendor that had purchased an entire case of these keys at a another hamfest in Germany, they were NOS (new old stock). With a smile on my face, I told Ken that I would first use the key on the upcoming Straight Key Night event that started New Years Eve.

The key has a clamshell cover with a disconnect which opens the circuit when the cover is open. It took me a while to figure out how to open that cover, it is not to be forced, there is a method. It had a typical European connector that I found would fit a crystal socket made for large crystals having inch pin spacing.

I attached a crystal socket to a few feet of speaker wire and attached a inch phone plug to the other end to allow the key to be connected to my IC-7000 and presto, it was ready for use.

Think about this, the key is 65 years old and did its first talking on the 2009 SKN. N4IQ had the privilege of being the first to hear words encoded by it, followed by WB5NHH, AB0CW, W0IVJ, W5KFS, K4ESX, K7UQH, K4AHO, NC4H, N6GOW, KI4FIA, W5ESE, KX9DX, and N5AN.

Hope all of you had a lot of fun this year and plan to return for even more fun next year. You have almost a full year to get creative and surface with something unusual, like a transmitter made with homemade tubes (lots of luck with that one), a modified Command set, a QSL 40 (who still remembers them?), a Heath AT-1, or maybe a vintage transistor transmitter, how old are 2N3866s? Maybe you can figure out how to get enough selectivity on a BC-455 receiver to use it on 40 meters. There are so many things one can consider trying. How about a BC-453 with a converter (they called these Novice Q5ers years ago). Just get it done and be ready! -- K5BZH