One thing about Vibroplex: they never figured out how to make a weight!! Their weights are small in diameter. That means they essentially make the pendulum thicker! That doesn't work worth a darn.
My Vibroplex will drop to about 23 WPM with THREE Vibroplex weights loading up the pendulum. It'll drop to about 17 WPM with ONE E.F. Johnson Speed-X weight on the pendulum. The difference is that the Johnson weight is much larger in diameter, so the effective position of the weight is nearer the end of the pendulum. As we discussed earlier, simply making the pendulum slightly longer, as many have done with clips, weights, bits of tubing, etc., has had better effect than adding a row of "Vibroplex" weights. Maybe that's why we have the digital revolution. The Elecraft rigs shift speed regardless of the paddles. Too bad for Vibroplex. I was always a fan of Les Logan who invented the famous "Speed-X" bug anyway. To me, he was sort of the "Elecraft" of the 1930's bug business: superior product at a superior price. Ron AC7AC -----Original Message----- Chris, My wife got the bug bug, the straight key bug, the iambic key bug... fairly recently too. She is a dedicated but fairly slow cw operator as well and keeps a 1960 vintage vibroplex, a blackwidow iambic and a modern russian knockoff of the world war II Junkers german key all tied to her K2 at the same time. She's also got 3 or 4 more bugs, mostly Vibroplex. One can buy weights for the Vibroplex to slow it down and I think she's got 2 weights on her regular key. One of the keys had a 4-40 screw hole tapped in the side of the weight. It was explained that this used to be done by some operators that installed a copper tube, squashed and drilled, to provide an extra weight as a lever that could be used to immediately change speeds by pushing the top outward or inward - without having to loosen the weight screw, position the weight and then tightening the weight screw down again. best regards, Charles wb5izd _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
