Another week of amateur radio has expired. Expired Ham, get it? 🙂
Welcome to another issue of Expired Ham, a weekly newsletter where I discuss the ways I participated in the amateur radio hobby this week.
The ham community learned of the passing of Elwood Downey, WBØOEW, earlier this week. You may not recognize the name or call sign, but you’re certain to recognize HamClock, which is the tool he created and provided to hams worldwide. It seems he wished to take HamClock with him when he left as there is a message on the website stating that services will last only until June 2026, after which anyone with a HamClock running today will find that they no longer function. RIP Elwood.
My antenna remains buried under a few inches of ice from last weekend’s weather event followed by a week of sub-freezing temperatures and very little direct sunlight. The entire backside of my house is still iced over. In fact, my car is still snowed in also as I’ve not needed to drive anywhere in a long while and the plow truck that came through the neighborhood last weekend did a crappy job of clearing things so that people could easily clear their vehicles out. This is to say that this is yet another week of no hamming for this guy!
I’ve tried tinkering with a few things as a result. Back when I purchased my Begali Simplex Pro paddles, I was told that they no longer ship them with a dust cover, even though their website stated that they did. I could buy one from one from GØPNM they said, but these are covers that are simple sheets of plastic that press together and rest on top of whatever surface you have your key sitting on. I didn’t want that. If Vibroplex can make a dust cover that rests on the edges of their keys’ bases, why can’t someone do the same for the Begali keys?
What I thought was the obvious place to look for a solution was the 3D printing maker websites and Etsy. I found nothing that suited my wants in either place. After a bit more searching online, I came across a blog post from GM4UBJ describing how he used a simple crafts container to replace the cheap dust cover that he had gotten with his Begali Simplex years prior. Something caught my eye in his photographs. I had several of the exact same containers here at the house! The wife and I had been using them as parts holders for several of board games that we have. I didn’t think we’d miss one if I took it and made my own dust cover.
Using a Dremel and cutting wheel just caused the plastic to melt and get nasty so I just used a simple saw which worked perfectly to cut out a recess in one wall of the container to clear the paddles once the new dust cover was placed on top of the key. The nice thing about this particular container is that it just happens to be the perfect size to fit on top of the Begali Simplex while resting gently on the paddles’ base. Sadly, I searched far and wide to find this same container on sale somewhere online and could not locate it. The best I can recommend is for you to take some measurements and search for a suitable alternative that matches those dimensions.
That’s all I have for this week.
Keep warm and 73,
Matthew, K2MAS
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