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.