CW FUN

I’ve been on an old radio kick here lately.  Restoring the old crystal radio has been a lot of fun.  I have it all stained up now but still need to put some varnish on it so it looks nice and shiny.  I’ll take some pics when it’s all back together.

Amber took the boys to the Children’s Museum one day last week.  She found a new-fangled crystal radio made by the Slinky company and bought it for them.  So we’ve also been putting that together.  It isn’t working quite right yet but I can hear the earpiece pop and crackle a bit.  I think we’re on the right track.  It helped a lot when I hooked it up  to the  shack ground and the 80m dipole.  Sometimes it takes a long time to get this low tech stuff to operate!

In keeping with the theme of crystal radios and planning for maybe a regen project, I’ve been working on my dismal CW skills.  If I want to work some old radio I figure nothing is more appropriate than the original operating mode.  I’ve make three contacts so far.  I was fortunate to find some other hams on the band who also operate slow code.  I got QSL cards from two of them this week.  They both thanked me for my slow code and being patient with them.  I  think I need to thank them, too, for suffering through my code skills!  I’m vowing to do more CW this year and learn to really enjoy it.  So far ,so good.

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