Marshall Emm, N1FN proprietor of the online shop Morse Express (and related enterprises) became a Silent Key in February of 2020. His site seems to have been on auto-pilot in the interim causing me to be a little reluctant to place an order.

I recently visited the site and noticed a NEW message that says, “Milestone Technologies & Morse Express is closed. We are now selling our inventory at 33% off”. While there seem to be all manner of odds and ends available at discount, the Oak Hills Research (OHR) brand seems to have vanished.

I think it was more than 20 years ago when I purchased and built an OHR-500, a five-band CW only transceiver that originally flowed from the Oak Hills Research lab of Doug DeMaw, W1FB. It was the first multi-band HF transceiver I built from a kit and it delivered outstanding performance.

But like almost every sad ham radio story ever told I sold that off at some point (though I can’t recall why or what I got in return for it). A few years later, after OHR was in the capable hands of N1FN, I tried to capture lightning in a bottle again when I purchased and assembled a single-band (40M) CW station.

The OHR-100A along with a WM-2 wattmeter and DD-1 digital frequency display work extremely well and reside on a shelf in the shack ready to be put into service on a moments notice. It’s one of the few analog transceivers remaining in my collection and I would have loved to have added one for 30 and another for 20 to the collection, but apparently that was not to be.

I’d recommend a visit to the old Morse Express site to do a little spelunking to see if you can find any discounted treasures that will only be available for a short time longer.