[AMRadio] Cut up vibroplex clarification

[Donald Chester]

Charlie, W4MEC in NC wrote:
> I don't want to cut any of my Vibroplexes in half, and I remember thinking 
> the same thing when I read that article, who would cut up a Vibroplex?  
> But, a friend >of mine has one he got in a collection of old keys and wants 
> to sell it on ebay.  If he could include a copy of the original article about the 
> modification of it, 'provenience' of a sort, might help him sell it.  

> He just sold a home made bug he paid a dollar for at a hamfest a while back, 
> wrote up a wonderful BS story about it that any ham could see through and 
> would enjoy the humor, put it in the description in the Ebay ad, started the bid at a 
> couple bucks, and it sold for over $130.    The arm was a bit of hacksaw blade, 
> and as he said, made back in the 'Hacksawian age' where a ham would build 
> anything to save a buck.  The spirit of P.T. Barnum lives on ebay.  It was a very 
> nice copy of a Vibroplex though, so it may have had a collector value to the buyer.

I knew an elderly ham back in the 1960s, Conrad Bridges W4EBG (now SK) in Paducah KY, who used a home-made bug.  He was a pretty good machinist, and his worked every bit as well as a Vibroplex, except he made it so it would send slower without adding a bunch of extra weights.  It was precision-built, close to a replica of a Vibroplex, not a makeshift hammy  hambone gadget made with a hacksaw blade. He never used anything but a homebrew transmitter; he even wound his own modulation transformer.  I don't know what happened to the bug, but I would loved to have got it after he died.

Don k4kyv