Morse Key No 19 - The Vibroplex Blue Racer.As any keen cw operator will tell you the Vibroplex family of keys are well known and most would like to own one and maybe use it on air.Recently one of our Club members was offered a Blue racer and also other radio gear including a rig and other items. This offer to him was made by a lady whose husband has become a silent key.She had no idea of what they were used for. She obviously took no interest in her OM?s hobby and was originally going to put the whole lot in the dump, amazing! Our member paid her a sum of money and happily took away the goodies. Unfortunately the Club member in question is a G1 with no interest in cw . That being the case I have asked him to bring the Blue Racer to out next Club meeting when we intend to connect it to a rig and try for some qso?s using the key.If we have success with this I will add the required postscript to this article.
The Mode of CW (Morse)Whilst this page is called ?the Mode page? the most common entries are about the Morse code, its use and the hardware to achieve this. With that in mind it was felt that a list of the more common ?Q? codes as used by cw operators would be a good idea.For those operators already using them on a regular basis our apologies for teaching you to ?suck eggs? hi, but for newcomers they are there to help. Whilst researching for those more commonly used codes I found one that I feel is a good one but confess to not hearing it often or using it. I leave it to the reader to guess which one I mean. (find the answer at the bottom of ?construction 2?) click hereNote - If followed by a question mark then it asks the question.
Vibroplex Blue Racer Video - Click Here
Postscript to Vibroflex Key:The key was duly brought to the Club by Keith G1YTO and once connected to a rig with the transmit mode disabled we put the key to the test. After some adjustments, here we relied on information gleaned from the web as no one had used a Vibroflex before.As one of the only cw operators at the meeting I duly tried to use it. I found that because I was used to a normal iambic paddle key I had great difficulty in using the bug. The main problem was that although the ?dit? side of the key worked exactly like a paddle that is, sending ?dits?whilst holding finger plate, the ?dah? side only sends one dah?. Trying to get my brain to use this ?dah? as one would a straight key, i.e. moving the right finger pad the correct number of times for the ?dah?s was something I guess would take me some time to master.In conclusion I would say that if you decided to buy and use a bug then fine, but remember if you are used to using a paddle then some retraining of your brain / finger co-ordination would be needed.Tony GØPEH.
Swale Amateur Radio Club G4SRC
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