I tend to consider eBay as a reflection of our society, from the luxurious to the looney tunes — and it never ceases to surprise even a jaded eBay'er like myself.
There's a fellow from France who has a device listed that he'll share with you for $2 Australian that promises to be quite an alarm system. He has a video that demonstrates it, and its a rather low-tech item — you clamp a cell phone in a fixture and position a electrical solenoid over a proper button (or buttons) so it will call you when the “alarm” is triggered, i.e., the solenoids fire and dial your number.
The listing isn't for the alarm system, but how to make it. I don't know what he's selling for certain, the video link is pretty self-explanatory.
Another big-dollar eBay item appears to be domain names geared to the presidential races. For example, GOVERNORPALIN.ORG will only set you back $4,500. EMPTYSUITOBAMA.COM is a bargain at $1,000 Buy It Now. MCCAINPALIN08.WS has a starting bid of $900, but no bidders yet. And there's always IHATESARAPALIN.COM (with the .ORG, .NET and .INFO thrown in for the price of $5,000.
HAM GEAR COMES, HAM GEAR GOES. I recently sold one of my Yaesu FT-757GXs to a fellow who used to live in LaRue County. The guy reneged on the deal because of his horse's vet bill (the most creative excuse to date), so I had to list it again. It sold for less, but sold — which is what counts.
I recently received a new-to-me rig that was one I've wanted for many, many years. I'm not sure why, but the Hallicrafters FPM-300, otherwise known as the “Safari” model, has always appealed to me.
The Safari model was the last transceiver offered by Hallicrafters, which by this time was part of the Northrop corporation. It was manufactured from 1972-74, with at least three different “Mark” versions in that time. Mine is one of the earlier ones.
For the money in its day, it was an average HF transciever. Fairly bare bones, too. It has no RIT, no noise blanker. There's no CW filter.
The rig is a hybrid one; all solid-state with the exception of the driver and final tube. It uses a sweep tube final, and just one. It was rated at 200 watts input. Mine puts out about 80-90 watts. Mine has the optional cooling fan, which isn't a bad idea for any rig running sweep tube finals.
SAFARI IMPRESSIONS? I've been running the rig in the spot formerly occupied by my Icom IC-746PRO (which is on its way to Washington State for repairs), and its not a bad rig. The eHam reviews aren't very kind, but so far I've found mine to be a competent rig for its vintage.
The rig has built-in AC and DC supplies, which is a nice touch. It makes it a very compact and dense rig. The Icom has a handle on the side, and so should the Safari! The Safari is about the same dimensions as the 746PRO, just about a half-inch taller.
If you're just going to use the rig on receive, you can save power by not energizing the final filaments. It cuts down on the heat generated too. Without the finals energized, the rig doesn't get warm. The optional fan keeps it all quite cool even with the finals cooking.
I've not made a contact on phone yet, I had to complete wiring a mic for it (fortunately it shares the same wiring pinouts with the Atlas 210x in the shack now too). I rewired a new shield 1/4-inch phone plug for the mic, and it seems to work OK.
The rig is surprisingly stable. Over the course of the first 30 minutes it'll drift some, but once warmed up its pretty steady for a rig thats 35 years old. The receive audio is good, and the selectivity is better than you would think, given there's no notch, no filtering, no nothing beyond the RF gain control.
I've wanted an FPM-300 for years, but finding one that's operational and affordable hasn't been an easy task. I'm not interested in a collector's item, I just want a rig that works. What sold me on this rig was the seller posted videos of it in operation. It sure helps you get a picture of how well a rig operates when you can actually see video of it working. I had a good idea I wasn't going to wind up with a pig in a poke.
I'm going to try operating the Hallicrafters for a while, even after the Icom returns. The FPM appears to be a keeper, at least for this week. That opinion is subject to change without notice.
It's late, I'm tired, and the FPM has drifted off frequency just enough to be irritating. Time to pull the plug on all of us. G'nite.