The annual Straight Key Night is one of my favorite events of the year. It started out as a New Year’s Eve event (thus “night”), but officially it runs from 0000z to 2359z on 1 January. I made a handful of QSOs during the day using my J38 key (which gets used regularly, not just once a year) and my usual station gear. I’m still hoping I can resurrect my novice transmitter and receiver and put them on the air one of these years, but my rocks are all for the old Novice subbands, which have since been turned over to phone operators, so I’d have to find some different ones.
"There are many pursuits which men and women follow, outside of their regular business or profession. No hobby is more suitable for people in general than radio."–Charles William Tassig, The Book of Radio, 1922.