Egg on My Face

I recently bought a Begali Simplex paddle. I was excited because it’s a really beautiful paddle, and it got glowing reviews on eHam.

Right from the start, though, I had problems with it. The contacts seemed to be flakey, and at times, seemed to make no contact at all. I e-mailed Begali, and he said he’d send me a new one and to send the one I had to Lloyd, K3ESE, who is (sort of) his agent here in the U.S.

When I emailed K3ESE, he noted that this is sometimes a problem with Begalis and advised me to try polishing the contacts first. To do this, he sent me four little pieces of very fine sandpaper: 400, 600, 800, and 1000 grit. He said to use them on the contacts from coarsest (400) to finest (1000).

When I put the contacts under the magnifying glass, you could see that it wasn’t a smooth surface. Using the sandpaper, I was able to get the contacts smooth, but when I hooked it back up to my keyer, the paddle still acted intermittent. This was very frustrating. I had a paddle that looked great, but worked lousy.

I put the paddle aside for a couple of days while trying to decide what to do. I had just about decided to send it back when I thought I’d give it another chance last night. This time, however, instead of connecting it to my Heathkit keyer, I plugged it into my KX-1.

This time, it worked like a charm! I plugged it into my IC-746PRO, and again, it worked flawlessly. So, I guess all along the problem was with my keyer–or probably more likely the cable that runs from the keyer’s printed circuit board to the phone jack.

This is really embarassing, but I really had no reason to suspect the keyer. It worked just fine while the Bencher was connected to it, and I haven’t had any problems at all with it since I started using it over four years ago. I guess the moral of the story is that to avoid getting egg on your face check EVERYTHING that could possibly cause a problem.

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After choosing the titile for this blog entry, I thought to myself, “getting egg on one’s face” is a great saying, isn’t it? I did a quick Google search and came up with the following explanations on www.phrases.org.uk:

1. This expression possibly alludes to dissatisfied audiences pelting performers with raw eggs. [Colloquial; mid-1900s]. From _The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms_ (1997).
2. Origin: From the embarrassment suffered if the yellow yolk is on ones lips or beard after eating a soft boiled egg in one of those egg cups, a favorite breakfast of the upper crust… Yellow egg shows up especially well on a beard or mustache. From Origin of Phrases: Chapter 9.

Cool, eh?