Background and
Introduction :
Just before I was first licenced in 1988, I visited my
parents one long weekend and took with me my Datong D90 morse tutor and a key to
keep up my daily practice as I was fast approaching my test time. During a
30-minute practice session one day over that weekend, my (now late) father came
in and said something like "that's nice CW" and asked if he could have
a go himself. A little surprised, and not knowing quite what to expect, I let
him sit down at the desk and have a go. . . . . and he started to send the most
amazing CW I had heard. Smooth and fast. He then revealed that he used to be a
Class 1 telegraphist before and during WW II. So clearly, it is in my blood,
literally.
Like many, my father was in Singapore when it fell, and he
was captured and spent most of WW II as a POW, being forced to help in the
building of a supply railway and the real bridge over the River Kwai (amongst
others) in Siam, what is now Thailand. He was kept prisoner in an old monastary
that the Japanese had converted into a POW camp when not actually working. The
rations and conditions were appalling as you can probably imagine. Many of his
colleagues and friends never made it out of there and he rarely spoke of it as
it evoked so many bad memories for many a long year. I did attend a talk he gave
on it all once, hence now being able to write this account. I have also
inheritied his notes, and artifacts.
As the R.O. (radio officer) in
the POW camp, he used to regularly get out through a tunnel the POW's had dug,
ably assisted by a young 16 year old Siamese (now Thai) girl. She kept the
radio receiver and my father used to tune in and listen to the news, then convey
it back to the other POW's upon his return to the camp. Needless to say had
either of them been caught, it would have been certain death.
One
night, he returned with the news of what is now known as VJ day - and the
Commanding Officer (C.O.) of the POW's in the camp made the decision that they
had limited time to escape as their captors would eventually hear of this event
themselves, and simply execute all the prisioners and fade away into the local
surrounding area and try to blend in.
A plan was made and he
eventually escaped his captors with a good many other POW's from the camp and
made his way back through allied lines to the north of Burma by train (a
converted truck towing a number of open waggons) on the very railway they had
been forced to help build, from whence he was repatriated back to the UK.
He
weighed just 6½ stone (91 lbs or 41.277 kg) on arrival back in England and
carried with him his sole possessions ; a pair of hand-made boxer shorts (his
only article of clothing), his home-made chop sticks and a pack of home-made
playing cards, which are the artifacts I referred to earlier.
He
married my mother not long after his return and re-habilitation and I was born a
few years later. He did not return to that monastic site in Thailand until
1991, where he sought out that young girl who had helped him all those years
ago, now a 60-something grandmother, and I think he put a few ghosts to rest
permanently with that trip. He certainly came home with a lot of photos of the
trip, including some of the bridge, and the railway in general, and the adjacent
military cemetary. He eventually died in 2004, aged 84, so not a bad innings
all things considered you might say.
I was a mature student at
Southampton Institute of Higher Education in the late 80's, doing a sea-going
radio officer's engineering course at HND level, and part of that course was to
learn Morse Code to Maritime Radiocommunications General Certificate (MRGC)
standard. That standard proved more than sufficient for me to pass my Amateur
Morse Test (CW exam) at 12 words per minute at the same time.
When
I passed my CW exam, Dad was chuffed to bits and bought me a lovely solid brass
"Kent" straight key as a 'kit' which I had to build very carefully,
which which was to become "the station key" ; I used that one key for
many years and it was the beginning of my small and very modest collection of
morse keys assorted and various. I still have that lovely Kent key, and it is
still the station key to this day - however I also recently bought
another one - both are shown lower down on this page - have a look and see if
you can spot the difference. I still don't know which version is 'the right one'
as Kent can't tell me - maybe both are ?
Just after I was licenced in
1988, I was on the bottom end of 40m one day working a chap called Geo (G3ZQS,
who had a very nice steady fist) who was located in Darwen, up in a northern
part of England some several hundred miles from me, near Southampton at the
time, and after we had exchanged the usual infomation and ragchewed in a
modest-speed CW QSO, he invited me to join "FISTS", a CW club he was
the founder of that was just getting off the ground. The annual fee was very
modest he told me, and as I was a student at the time, I had no cash to speak
of, but could just about afford to join up if I went without a beer for 2 weeks,
so I did. That QSO was the start of a 25-year friendship between us. I still
hold that same FISTS membership (# 358) to this day, and I still love the
rythmic sound of well sent CW (and teach it to my radio students these days as
well).
The following collection of pictures will give you some
idea of the keys I have as it stands on the date given at the bottom of this
page - the titles / names of the keys (where known) are included both as a
picture caption and as a title. I have limited information on many of the keys,
and several of them are in need of some time and TLC, but they still form an
important part of the collection. Enjoy.
The Key Collection :
Just in case any of you are wondering, the black matting you can see in many of the following photos on the table is just a non-slip mat I use underneath the keys as a matter of routine these days - stops them wandering off when in use without physically screwing them down to the table.
The
Station Key, as mentioned above
This
is one of my favorite keys - a very high speed paddle key from G4ZPY
This
is the other straight Kent key I mentioned above - can you spot the difference ?
This
is the first of many paddles I've owned, a lovely heavy key that simply glides
along
Lovely
smooth action
This
is an early addition to the collection - a high speed Bencher twin paddle
This
is quite a recent addition to the collection - a USA Brown Brothers Combination
key with chamfered paddles for high speed working 
It's
the only one of this type I have
I
picked this one up a few years ago from a chap who had given up on CW - I'd seen
them in a showroom 15-odd years earlier and thought what a nice key they were,
but this one needs some serious TLC, as do several of the following for reasons
that will be fairly obvious. . . . . . . 
Page last updated on 14th August 2009