Monday, April 10, 2017 — Lest you think I’ve reached the half life on my radioactivity, I felt compelled to pen a few lines and share a bit of video with this blog’s readers. The video is (thankfully!) short, so fret not.
I have been faithfully checking in on the Georgia CW Net and doing my usual 75M lurking between 3898 and approximately 3995 kHz. Due to the fact I am in our library here at home, I’m using headphones more often than not to keep peace with the XYL and my physics major son, who occasionally does homework between rounds of Grand Theft Auto 5 and some GameBoy game or another (editor’s note: “Kids! What’s the matter with kids today?”)
I will admit that I haven’t operated a bug here at my library operating position — nothing against my beloved keys mind you, but my operating situation is such that I don’t have a very stable operating surface to work with; in fact, my iambic fist has suffered some due to the lack of stability of my little laptop workstation. It raises, lowers, tilts forward and backward, and sits on three wheels — not the image of “rock steady” by any stench of the imagination.
I have become reaquainted with the Bencher BY-1, and I’ve been reminded of how nice the key feels in use. Oh, I have other iambics in the shack, but I bought this Bencher because of a couple of things: 1. it was cheap and if I dropped it off the house it was no big loss; and 2. the key is a rock solid performer.
METER MALFUNCTION OR THE GHOST OF CONTESTERS PAST? While it isn’t a huge issue, as the video above highlights, the meter backlights on my beloved IC-756PRO are either malfunctioning, or the rig is possessed by the ghost of a CW contester who is trying to warn me of the inherent evils and inequities of the cabrillo scoring system.
As I may have noted earlier, the on/off lamp on the power button is also dead, which may just be the internal lamp in the power button — though its disappearance coincided with the blinky meter lamp issue.
Ultimately, the issue boils down to this — fix it or forget it?
My wife questioned the wisdom of sending an aging rig back through the mail for a meter backlight repair, just so it operates “perfectly.” If I was really concerned about the rig’s resale value, I would remember two things: First, I seldom get rid of ANY radio I buy. The likelihood of that is slim to none, she says. OK, guilty as charged. Secondly, if I wanted to maximize its resale value, I should search to locate an ORIGINAL box and packing for an IC-756PRO. After all, having the original box can add 20 percent to the resale value (a fact of Amateur Radio reality she continuously pokes fun at).
ON THE EBAY RADAR. I have several nice keys in the “watch” list, though the radio fund account was unfortunately raided to pay a pot full of insurance premiums. There’s a GHD GN907A-P optical bug in brand new condition, but with 2 days left it is sitting at $725 — a deal, but still way more than I’m prepared to pay. My wife would scalp me if she knew I bought a key that was THAT expensive. OK, I won’t tell her if you won’t, hi!
HEATING ISSUE? The problem I had where the rig would power down abruptly when keyed hasn’t returned. My guess is the issue was related to heat; the switching supply and rig on a corner of the shelf (with papers and stuff packed around it) left no room for airflow. I may need to add an outboard cooling fan just to remove the heat. We’ll see.
73 es CUL de KY4Z SK … dit dit …