Three new keys

As the aussie dollar dies and the exchange rate plummets (down > 11% in less than a week!), I can sense the appeal of eBay waning. And soon the pleasant flow of small and not so small packets from overseas may dry up. (Even now - with  slight recovery - the aussie is just at US 83 cents compared to 93c last week.)

This week I've received three keys - from the UK, the US and Victoria - all of them neat and smaller than your average morse key.

Arriving from the UK was a key made by New York firm J H Bunnell - similar to the very first key I ever had in my teens. It was billed as a WWII key.

Coincidentally in the same delivery there was a key I'd ordered from the J H Bunnell company in the states. I was responding to an (out-of-date as it turned out to be) note about a stash of NOS (new old stock) Bunnell Navy Flameproof keys. They wrote back promptly to let me know these keys were out of stock but they did have NOS supplies of the same MIL STD CMI-26003A keys manufactured as the prefix indicates by Molded Insulator. A very neat key, as new in what looks like the original labelled cardboard box.

The last of this trio of keys to arrive was an as new Hi Mound HK-705 which Morse Express describes as the little brother to my HK-708.

All of these keys are compact enough to literally fit in your pocket, but still not as small as - or perhaps as practical for portable ops - as the tiny Palm Paddle!