Jesse H. Bunnell Triumph education key

   This is the second in a series of posts about some straight keys I bought from the real estate of PA3BCB Gerard (SK). You can find the first one here. I recommend to view the last photo in that post. It showed my second J.H.Bunnell key in very bad shape. I managed to get it in better shape and it is shining in my shack now. I will not show the step by step process since I've done it in my first post. The nice thing of these keys is that you can completely disassemble them to clean every little separate part. This key looks almost the same as the first J.H.Bunnell key but is different.

   Obvious is the big knob with the flat round beneath it. Did you know that originally this was made to protect the operators from the high voltages and currents when they used keys on spark and tube transmitters. These knobs are also called "navy knobs" after international treaties required spark transmitters aboard ships after the sinking of the Titanic. 

I personalized my key engraving my call just below the button.

  The main thing that is different is the lever. It is made of brass and not from steel like the key in the first post of this series. I was wondering why and I found that this key was only used for education purposes.

It also features a different contact. Not sure if this is silver plated or tungsten. It seems you could get these keys with both type of contacts. This contact is bigger as on the other Bunnell key. The sound is when closing the contacts is also different which is obvious.

I like the feel of this key, I don't really know why. Could be psychological? I really like keying with it and feels completely different compared to the other Bunnell key. Could it be the key is choosing me as its operator? See the Bunnell keys together on the picture. What a lovely couple :-)

And of course I made some QSOs with it already. The first one with AM3MERCE for the video. Then I made QSOs with SV9/S53R and EA4IBF. The last one came back on my call which I made in slow morse to attract other beginner CW operators. 

My quest to learn CW (33)

 

Finally after 930 attempts I managed to get a 88% accuracy training english proverbs with a speed of 28/22 wpm. I promised myself to go up in training speed. I will delete all my attempts and start over on 28/24 wpm.

I will also increase my speed in the "lessons" or in other words the random 5 letters/numbers signs which are given for 1 minute. My training speed was 28/20 wpm and will now be 28/22 wpm.

The blue line above is at approx. 70%. You see that it is an up and down process. Some days are good, others are bad. Overall it went better I think. Still random signs are difficult. 

Am I on the right path? Some will say yes, some will say no. I've got fun and like the training and that's important. However after 33 months of practice I still have difficulties to decode morsecode. On the computer with perfect code is not as difficult as on real air. People make mistakes, you need to figure out words and abbreviations that are not really familiar.  I make a lot of mistakes and most of the times I really don't know what to key. When I key it goes wrong half of the time. But never have had a problem with any station at all. It seems every CW operator on air is happy there is a new CW operator active, and it doesn't matter whatever you try to key, they understand.

I'm now at a point that I want to make as many CW QSOs as possible. I look out for easy to work POTA stations and DX. Most of the time it is a 5NN TU report. But sometimes I will throw out a CQ and hope the best of it. Today IK0PIC Luciano came back to my CQ on 12m. I hope he understood what I tried to key since it was not without errors. At least he got my QTH which I managed to key well, which he repeated. Then I saw 10m could be open to Africa. I didn't hear anything on the band so I made a few CQs to wake things up. Surprisingly I heard a very weak HA coming back. It was barely audible. I suspected it was HA7RJA Rob and I was right. I suddenly heard him a bit stronger and was able to get my report and he got my report before the signal disappeared into the noise. A few minutes later I worked 3B9FR from Roderiques Isl. That was a very nice experience today and a lot more fun as making world wide contacts with FT8.

NTCQP August

 

NTCQP setup

   Love this one hour CW QSO party. It's all about fun and you can operate different ways. This month the challenge was QRP. 5 points for every QSO made with QRP power.  So I took the (tr)uSDX for this task. And this time I wanted to do the mechanic section for a change. So I connected my Jesse H. Bunnell steel lever straightkey.

One hour of searching, calling and sweating. It was difficult at times. Calling CQ did not get any response on both 40m and 80m. Most stations I heard were called by many others so most of the time I did move to see if I could work someone else which was difficult. At least I worked 6 stations, 5 on 40m and 1 on 80m.

First QSO was with PA3GPX Rene, I was glad he recognized me imidiatly. Last QSO was with PA3HEN Theo which I met personally on the Beetsterzwaag radio market in spring. I think he recognized me as he did QRS (slower code) for me which I appreciate very much.

QSO:    7033 CW 2026-08-20 1905   PA3GPX       599  RENE       260      

QSO:    7034 CW 2026-08-20 1910   OK2BVX      599  DALI       209      

QSO:    7022 CW 2026-08-20 1919   OK2KKI       599  PAVEL     NM       

QSO:    3556 CW 2026-08-20 1939   DF7DJ          599  BERT       235      

QSO:    7034 CW 2026-08-20 1957   PA4N            599  FRANK   295      

QSO:    7035 CW 2026-08-20 1959   PA3HEN      599  THEO       3   

 I think I discovered something else. The J.H.Bunnell key is not my thing. It is way too light and for people with sensitive soft hands. In the heat of the CW game I have a very heavy fist like they call it. I felt so sorry for the nice key which behaved like a frog when I was keying the code :-). It really looks nice and it is screaming for a gentle operator which I am not. I think I have to choose another key from the keys I still have to restore. Probably a militairy bulletproof key is better for me hihi. Till the next QSO party . .