Back in October, someone posted about a horn that was failing
intermittently on his 1998 Accord. I have the same problem, so I wrote
to ask his if he solved it, and he wrote back to say it was diagnosed
by a mechanic as a faulty cable reel, which is the where the horn,
cruise, and airbag signals go through the steering wheel.

It appears that my cable reel is bad, too, so I just thought I'd post
here and let everyone know about it. Maybe this will end up being a
high-failure component in the future. It concerns me, too: if the
airbag deployment signal goes through the same component, how do we
know IT'S not intermittent, too?

I ordered a new assembly from Honda, and I'll reply to this post to
let everyone know if it fixes it, once I get it installed.

(my symptoms, for the record: horn works always with no key in the
ignition. once the car is running, horn works UNLESS steering wheel is
perfectly centered. Once key is removed, horn works again)