Missed opportunity and Christmas memories

I guess I kind of blew an opportunity in the 40 Meter Fox Hunt last night. I didn't walk away empty handed, but I might have walked away with more if I wasn't so tired.

I heard Cathy W4CMG's Hounds baying rather loudly. I tuned 1 kHz down and there she was. I had to tighten up the filters a bit as last night was also the NAQCC mW Sprint. Anyway, I had her frequency picked out and was listening to her hand out pelts. I called a few times with no result and then some kind of digital signal came on, right on top of her! I have no idea what mode it was, as the only ones I can recognize by ear are RTTY and Olivia. This must have been one of the FTs. Fortunately, whoever was generating the signal didn't stick around long, and I finally worked Cathy at 02:23 UTC.

Cathy was the lower Fox, so I dialed up looking for Brian K0DTJ. I heard A Hound (just one!) and dialed down 1 kHz again. This time - nothing. I hung around a while and continued to hear only background noise, so I pulled the plug and went to bed. Looking at Brian's log this morning, I see he started working some East coast stations towards the very end of the hunt. I guess I should have stayed; but as I've said before, that's tough when you have to get up for work at 5:00 AM the next morning. That was no big deal when I was younger, but now ...................

Al Hanzl K2AL was asking about the Christmas keys on the 4 States io group. These were keys that were offered by Marshall Emm N1FN (SK) through his company, Morse Express. Each year a new miniature, yet fully functional straight key woold be offered to us Morse Code enthusiasts. They are so small that the advertising photo always depicted them as Christmas Tree ornaments.

This must have been all new to Al and he was asking for more information about them. Several of us pointed him to various websites and I e-mailed photos of the ones that I have, so he could see examples of what he was asking about,

Most of the ones that I have were manufactured by LLevas Telegrafia (pardon the spelling, I probably have it wrong) until he became an SK. The 2007 key, the only one that's not brass, is the last one that I collected. These are all given to me as Christmas gifts from my wife, Marianne.

I should have included a quarter in the photos to give you and idea how tiny these are. At the same time, these are not gimmicky, junky toys. They are fully functional, superbly manufactured straight keys. If my straight key fist wasn't so lousy, I would use them more. As it is, they've been on my shelf for so long that they need a decent cleaning.

72 de Larry W2LJ

QRP - When you care to send the very least!