OLD-STYLE COVER FOR A MODERN LOG

     It is modeled after one published by Bud in the 1930s:

     I'm not too unhappy with how it came out.

PORTABLE-MOBILE LOGBOOKS FOR AMATEUR RADIO

     Any more, hams are not required to keep logs - but it is nice to have a record of who you heard from, and when.  Here are a couple for portable and mobile operation -- Field Day is coming up!

      The upper one is an ARRL original, found at a well-known online auction site.  The lower is one I made when I took a ham station along on an extended out-of-town trip.

     ARRL version is "shirt pocket" size, 6¼" by 4".  Mine is 8½" by 5½", trimmed from standard-size pages with one cut.

TELEGRAPH KEYS AT 2014 DAYTON HAMVENTION

     A selection of old keys -- and one new one -- from the Dayton Hamvention:

"Pendograph," with a base-supported vertical pendulum for forming dits.

Pendograph close-up.  The owner let me try it -- very nice feel.  It's a "release of tension" design like the Mecograph: the reed is flexed at rest, and released to vibrate when you work the left paddle.

"Automorse," an Australian-made fully-automatic mechanical key.  Full-auto for International Morse, as used on radio, anyway:  the third paddle is for the long dahs of landline Morse, and that's manual.

This is a Mecograph, one of two versions.

The original machine for live coverage of news -- cut into the nearest telegraph wire and get to sending! You see these in old photos of press coverage of sporting events and Presidential appearances.

Sounders!

A full-auto, all-mechanical key built by Indy's own brilliant Richard Meiss. He knows more about the physics of bug keys than any man alive. This key is palm-sized, and uses a mechanically-varied mass to switch between dits and dahs.