Let's just call it "The Curious Case of The Keyer's Revenge."  I had been enjoying my first SKN for several hours and was in contact with Bill, AA4LR, in Rome, GA.  Suddenly I realized that even though I could still hear my keying in the sidetone of my Kenwood TS-940, my actual output dropped to zero after a few characters.  If I waited several seconds, I could send a few more letters and then. . . nothing.  All sorts of theories flooded my head as I tried to make my apologies to Bill and sign off.  Before long I had the top cover off the 940 and was peering inside.  Maybe a faulty high temp shutdown?  Then I tried an experiment.  Sliding over to the phone band, I discovered that if I switched to AM, my carrier would stay constant.  Hmmmmmm. . .   Phone but no CW.  Not a good thing for SKN.  Then I had another idea.

Because the key jack on the 940 is on the rear panel, the easiest way to connect a straight key is through my keyer, which stays connected as usual.  So both my J38 and my Navy Flamproof keys were wired in parallel with the dash lever of my paddle, and my MFJ keyer was set to "Semi Auto".  The keyer presents the dots and dashes as sent fromt the straight key to the input of the 940 . A little checking proved that the battery in my keyer was dying and had just enough energy to send a few letters before dropping below the minimum required voltage.  I switched my paddle to the Logikey K-5, and all was well, though I was muttering that Thomas Edison never had these problems.  

I never realized that keyers might experience straight key envy or that they have ways to extract revenge.