We’ve had springtime weather here the last couple of days, with promising weather in the immediate forecast. Its great for getting out in the yard, but awful weather for erecting antennas — the best performing antennas are erected in thunderstorms, of course!
We’re dealing with the Coronavirus here in Kentucky; I live in rural Kentucky, so I maintain social distancing by simply staying home, which I can manage just fine, hi hi.
I recent sold some gear on eBay, and it helped me fire some neurons in the old brain, reminding me that I still have some ham gear in my old Dodge Durango.
The Durango became my hamfest-mobile following eight years as the Section Managermobile. What I had forgotten was the ham gear I had left in the Durango!
I found two rigs that I hadn’t been able to locate here inside the house — a Kenwood TS-50 with AT-50 antenna tuner, and my Kenwood TS-690S (basically at TS-450S with 6 meter capability). Both still have my hamfest price tags on them.
Of course, hamfests have been canceled, including the Dayton Hamvention, sending hams with cash to spend to eBay.
I brought in the TS-50 and AT-50 and checked them out — the TS-50 is an impressive rig despite the lack of modern bells and whistles. When I list the rig I’ll probably include the AT-50 as package deal.
The TS-690S is a sweet rig too. I’ll bring it in this weekend and check it out before I list it as well.
WHAT’S IN THE BOX? While my son and I were poking around the boxes of hamfest paraphernalia, there was a large box by the rear door. What was that??
Closer inspection revealed the box was still taped shut — this was a box that arrived by FedEx and ended up in the back of the Durango and had never been opened! Yikes!
The rig turned out to be a Heathkit SB-102 that I must have purchased online sometime in the past two or three years. I didn’t completely unpack the rig, but it looked to be in superb condition. Oh, and I found the matching SB-600 speaker/power supply to go with it.
The problem I’m going to have is having enough table top space to give the SB-102 a good checkout. But I will, I may just have to check it from the basement.
My Hallicrafters station is coming together, slowly but surely. I’m going to replace my Yaesu FT-950 with my Hallicrafter “Twins” — SX-117 receiver and HT-44 transmitter. The PS-150 speaker/power supply arrived this week, and I’m only lacking two more pieces — the HA-1 keyer, and the necessary 92-ohm coax assembly to allow transceive operation with the SX-117 VFO feeding the HT-44.
I’m not sure how long I’ll keep this station assembled here in the library, but I’m looking forward giving that station a workout. I’ll have to find a D-104 mic and a 2-pin mic connector to run it on the station. I’ve never made but a handful of phone contacts anyway; most of my operating here in the library is CW.
I might end up delaying the install of the Hallicrafters station and instead go with the Heathkit SB-102. To enable transceive operation on the Halli, I’ll have to cobble together the RG-62/U cable to connect the two rigs. I’m also lacking a T/R switch.
Twenty years ago when I had the station setup, I had a really nice Johnson T/R switch that worked like a champ. MFJ has a really nice T/R switch that has automatic sensing — it’ll switch from receiver to transmitter when it senses RF from the txmtr. Of course, the MFJ switch also has connections for switching from the rcvr and txmtr, but the RF sensing is a nice option.
The more I think about it, the more inclined I am to move my shack to our former master bedroom upstairs. I could move the ham shack out of the office and dedicate that room entire to office stuff. Hmmm. Or what make more sense, is to setup a second complete shack upstairs, that way I could setup the stations I plan to keep and have sufficient room to operate them.
As an added bonus, I would have sufficient room to display my key collection.
73 es CUL …. de KY4Z … SK SK …. (dit dit) … …