Yesterday I had some time to kill and was decided to tune across my favorite part of 40, the old Novice band. There was a contest underway further down the band, but the usual 2 or 3 QSOs going on between 7.0-7.25 MHz.
I heard a fellow calling CQ, and realized I had never turned the HW-16 on, which is my rig of choice. I quickly tuned the antenna tuner, hooked the Vibroplex Lightning Bug to the Yaesu FT-2000 and answered the guy's call.
The guy was in Sun Praire, WI; his name was also Jim and he was also running a Yaesu, though he had the FT-1000 Mk V. I almost bought one of those before I bought my PROIII, but I don't regret the PROIII purchase one bit.
We chatted back and forth a while, and signals were good. Turns out he's been a ham about 10 years, though he told me he was a retread — he had been a ham originally in the early 1960s for about 10 years.
In the middle of our QSO, my homebrew “bug tamer” slipped and the weight caught on the damper frame of the Lightning Bug, so I had some rather erratic CW for a few seconds. I had to readjust it and pick back up where I was. I apologized to Jim for the screw up, and he paid me quite a compliment — he said he thought I was using the electronic keyer or a keyboard. I can't claim my bug fist is that good, but it was nice to hear it.
The bug tamer on the lightning bug gets a little screwy because if it isn't tight, it will wobble, and that will deaden the vibration of the keying arm. A couple of times when making H's or 5's, the vibrating arm damn near didn't get that 4th or 5th dit out. After I reset the tamer, the key was a little faster, but at least it was sending solid dits.
I was copying the mail on 3960 yesterday listening to Joe, K4DZM and some other regulars chewing the rag, and I overheard Joe say that M.D. Hill, KA4BYA, passed away recently. He had been a spitfire of activity in Hardin County when I first got my ticket. I don't think he had been on the air much in the last 15 years.
I have a hamfest coming up in a couple of weekends, the Ashland Tailgate hamfest. I hope the weather is good. The week after that, I'll go down to Louisa for their hamfest. My wife and I are planning to head to Dayton too, though I don't have anything on my ham shoppiing list. This will be primarily a meet and greet meeting, though I would enjoy attending a banquet one night or the other. Hopefully we'll get to leave here Thursday and come back Sunday early.
The former president of our radio club is leaving town in a couple of weeks. Ed Fowler, K4EEF, has been having health problems living alone for a year or so. His family lives out of state, and they've had to take turns coming in to take care of him when he's wound up in the hospital.
He called me last Saturday night and told me he was giving me a radio, his old FT-757GX. I wasn't sure why, but he told me he was leaving Bardstown. His daughters and his son had a conference call with him early Saturday and told him he was going to move in with one of his daughters because of his health.
He said he was fairly shocked, but they have it all planned out. He's going to stay with one daughter while the other finishes a remodeling project they are doing — a $60,000 remodeling job intended for Ed moving in with her.
Ed and his family moved here in 1972, and he has a house full of stuff, including a basement full of his former hobby interests — woodworking, large format photography and model railroading. One of his daughters and son-in-laws is taking a week off to come down and pack him up into a single large u-haul. There's no way all that stuff will fit into one truck. I hate for Ed to have to go through the process of shedding all those memories and all that “stuff.” I hate to see Ed leave town, though I know its for the best. He really has needed family close by.
When I visited ARRL HQ in October 07, I was looking over the Diamond Terrace outside the main entrance when I looked down at my feet and saw the inscription: “K4EEF SK.”
Apparently the brick was in memory of the original holder of the callsign. I was going to mention to Ed at the time that he already had a memorial brick in place at HQ, but that felt just too damn macabre a comment to make, particularly since he's had a number of health issues over the past couple of years. I think when I buy my Diamond Terrace brick, I want it to be there before I'm a silent key. If not, I'm going to leave instructions to put my damn name on it so any other holder of my call won't be confused.
I've been cleaning up the shack, making actual progress too. My goal is to add a 3 or 4-foot fold-out cafeteria-type table in the shack for a work table. Right now I could use a workspace to do my soldering, rig pulling apart, eBay photo shoots, etc.
Actually I want to pull the Knight R-100A receiver off the table its on and take it apart and fix some wiring errors. The antenna trimmer control actually makes the receive frequency vary, which the schematic shows must be a simple wiring error. While its not the best receiver in the world, it really doesn't do bad when it is warmed up. It needs an alignment, which doesn't make much sense right now until the wiring is correct. Actually I've considered selling it and the matching txmtr, the Knight T-150. I could put my Hallicrafters SX-101A or the National NC-300 in their place.
I really need that table to get back on track eBaying stuff in the attic. I have two National txcvrs, the NC-200 and NC-500 with supplies; a Swan 350, and it seems to be at least one other Hallicrafters SR-150. Hell, I may have two. One of them came from a Florida university shack, and the guys had mucked up the t/r relay, and were wiring a replacement, but didn't get it finished. That rig would be a good project to finish.
I have a simpler project or two waiting too. I have the SX-140 receiver that I need to change out the volume control in, and I have an old Allied general coverage tube receiver that needs the filter caps replaced.
I need to sell some of that stuff … I still want the matching speaker for my FT-2000. I wonder what other external speakers I might try that would work well for less money? I don't need DSP or filters in the speaker. Some guys use some high quality stereo-type speakers for their receivers. Anything would be an improvement over the built-in speaker that's firing upward into the shelf above it.
I ran across my Butternut vertical in the barn yesterday, and realized I really should put that thing up in the front field. I have plenty of room for radials, the only drawback would be the feedline length. I would have to cross the driveway too, and I hate to have to cut the blacktop to lay it underground. It would probably take 150 feet of feedline too. I need to look it over closely, I know its got some broken parts.
Enough for now, we're heading to the outlaws for Easter dinner shortly. 73!