Sunday, Jan. 31, 2016, 11:50 p.m. — Well, I’ve come down with another case of Ham-itis — the disease that causes uncontrollable urges to buy yet another piece of ham gear.
I guess what really triggered my slide back into Ham-itis was the receipt of the 73 magazine CDs that I ordered on eBay — all issues from 1960 to 1993. Unlike the ARRL’s “official” QST CDs they published years ago, these scans are all higher in quality.
I was a fan of “Uncle Wayne” Green since before I received my ham ticket. It’s good to discover that it was NOT his age that made him such an argumentative fellow — he was a pain-the-neck t0 the ARRL long before he founded 73 magazine.
As much as he bitched about the ARRL at times, he was always a member and a supporter. He had his ideas about what the League should be doing, and in the first year of 73, he laid out some of those thoughts in one of his famous (infamous?) “Never Say Die” editorials.
After outlining the success the gun lobby had protecting threats to the Second Amendment, he correctly told his readers that the National Rifle Association was the lobbying group that kept a watchful eye on gun-related regulatory issues. Wayne called on the ARRL to do the same thing with Amateur Radio; rather than take a passive role, it needed to take up for ham radio in a more formal manner.
We know now that the league has always had private talks with FCC officials, but until recent years, the League did not officially “lobby” anyone. Former Great Lakes Director Jim Weaver was instrumental in pushing the League to do so, and it agreed to create a program he proposed regarding grassroots legislative action. I was one a volunteer in that program as a “Legislative Action Assistant.” The program eventually faded from view, but I think it helped get hams and league members alert to the power they have with their members of Congress.
Back to the ham gear … yes! So what’s caught my eye this weekend? Listings for Icom IC-746s (PRO and non-PRO); various version of the IC-756 PRO; a couple of Hallicrafters SX-117s and HT-44s that sold; a Swan Astro 150 (that sold for a cool $500!), and some of those Chinese 4, 5 and 6-band 20-watts-and-under rigs.
Of course, the craziest part is that I have a mint condition IC-746PRO and an IC-756PROIII in their boxes stored in attic — along with a boat load of other gear and assorted boat anchors — and I can always pull them out and run them. But it isn’t necessarily the access to the gear, but the thrill of the hunt that I enjoy. It’s like the biggest game of chance in the world involving ham radio — if you bid high enough, you’ll win the auction; if not, well, better luck next time.
UPGRADE MY Y2K? Something that I’ve serious considered buying is a dongle that will interface my Yaesu FT-2000 with my computer, and give me a real-time panadapter. I already use the software with the Cross Country Wireless SDR receiver I have, and the software is solid; the RTL SDR adapter kit is sold on eBay for $75 and includes everything you need for the panadapter; if you want point-and-click rig control (which I would), then it will also require the RT Systems CAT cable.
I love my FT-2000; however the one thing I have thought was pretty much a dog was the DMU-2000 and its dragging-ass spectrum display. What a disappointment it was! I’ve learned to live with it, but I long for the days of my PROIII, with its much faster and more colorful spectrum display.
The RTL kit will give that back to me, and with my return to hamming, it would give me more capability with my Y2K. Of course, I’m not forgetting that I have still in the box the FLEX 3000 which I probably should be getting placed in the shack rather than mess with the Y2K.
I’ve held off on the Flex radio because the shack computer is pretty wimpy, and I would like to upgrade it to something newer that is better than the minimum required (my existing PC will be sketchy at best for meeting the minimum).
SOUTH GEORGIA EVERYWHERE! The South Georgia Island DXpedition has been active on just about every ham band, according to the spots I’ve seen. I spent a while trying to hear them on 18 MHz and 10 Meters … I did hear them on 40 and 15 phone, working split on 15. I called for about half an hour and gave up, their sigs were dropping further into the noise. The Left Coast seemed to been having better luck than my peanut whistle 100 watts to a queen-size box spring in the attic.
It never fails to amaze me how DXpeditions seem to prompt intelligent hams to devolve into neaderthallic hams who seem to think yelling their callsigns at the same time will get them somewhere. With pile ups that big, its either power or operating technique (or both) that wins the day. I knew I was fighting a losing battle on 15, so I moved on. I heard them on CW on another band (actually I was tuning the CW band and ran across this massive pileup and had to pull up the dx spots to figure out who the hell was so popular).
CW NET. I considered swapping out another key for the 100th Anniversary Original I’ve been using, just to switch things up, but I got in the shack too close to net time. I have a really, super-nice Les Logan Speed-X 500 with a grey base and chrome pivot frame that looks like new. I need to put some of these other keys on the air.
CHAIR FIX! The low-back office chair I have in the shack has been an absolute piece of crap since the day I overpaid for it at Staples two or three years ago. Oh, the chair sits fine, the problem is the hydraulic cylinder that controls the height setting. It won’t stay up; it drops on its own no matter how you sit in it.
Granted, I have a lot of lead in my ass, but the chair will even sink on its own without my fat ass in the seat. The truth is I’ve been cussing that chair since the month I bought it, and I was cussing it last week, swearing to go buy a new one. With my return to hamming, the chair has become a more frequent pain in the posterior. Being the “thrifty” type of guy I am (i.e., cheapskate), I first looked to the internet for a fix for this gawd awful chair — and found one.
Basically you cut a piece of PVC and block the hydraulic cylinder at the seat’s highest position. It won’t lower, but that’s exactly what I want. So tomorrow, off I go to get about a five-inch piece of 1-1/2-inch PVC. I may have something like that in the barn, I’ll check that first.
A DIGITAL FIRST. I have my ham shack PC set up as a dual boot machine — LinuxMint 
or Windows XP (yeah, its THAT old!). Today I made my first PSK contact using FLDIGI running under Linux. Like butter!
Linux has given the machine a new life .. it just operates faster under Linux. I don’t think the PC will serve me well for the Flex, but for now, I’ll go with it. Now that my wife has full recovered from her surgery, maybe I can watch eBay for an appropriate (and bargain-priced) PC for the Flex.
73 es CUL … de KY4Z … SK … dit dit