Saturday, Dec. 26, 2020
Well, the dust has settled from Central Kentucky’s first white Christmas in a good many years. The tree will stay up through next weekend, probably longer. Being a COVID Christmas, we had no parties, no guests and beyond my wife and son and I (and Rocky, our dog) we saw no one.
I’ve been active on my CW traffic net most nights, the 80-meter band has been in good shape. While I was formerly using my Yaesu FT-77, I decided to try out my two FT-757GX rigs.
One of them was a gift to me from Ed Fowler, K4EEF (SK) when he moved from Kentucky to his daughter’s house in Penn. The other I picked up cheap somewhere along the way.
On the one 757, I thought the narrow filter was malfunctioning. But what I learned is that the IF shift and width controls are a little off center when you engage the narrow CW filter. You have to adjust both controls, and then — boy howdy! — the CW filter comes alive!
On the past couple of weeks, it seems there’s been a lot of activity on the band some nights, and I needed both the rig’s CW filter and careful adjustment of the IF shift and width controls to slice and dice the passband. And honestly, I’ve never used those controls as much as I have the past couple of weeks. Its really amazing how nicely you can tune between two very, very close CW signals. It isn’t the selectivity you’ll find on my FT-2000, but you can accomplish the same thing — isolation of the CW signal you wish to copy and cutting out the ones you do not.
As odd as it might sound, I have a new respect for the FT-757GX since I’ve been using it regularly. Now the rig’s front-end is subject to overload, particularly in a phone contest, but overall, its the cat’s meow for non-contest operation.
HISTORY. I bought my first FT-757GX from Larry, NE8V, at the Bedford, Ind., hamfest about 1988. He had been listing the radio on the 3898 Trader’s Net, ,and said he would have it at Bedford. I had been planning such a purchase, and I ended up selling two great (and complete) boat anchor stations — a Hallicrafters HT-32A/SX-101A, and an HT-37 / SX-110, among other extra radio stuff. I had to sell the rigs to help purchase the FT-757GX, which I purchased for the then-princely sum of $600.
I kept that rig for many years, and later sold it while raising money to purchase something else (probably my very first new HF rig, the Icom IC-756PROIII. Not too many years later, my friend Ed, K4EEF, was leaving town to move in with his daughter, and he left me his FT-757GX, which I still have today. When you think about how small a radio it is, Yaesu certainly packed a lot of great features in such a small space.
I think I’m going to operate the FT-757GX a while and then box it back up to make room for something else.
EBAY PLANS. With the new year just around the corner, I have two additional SB-102s to get rid of. I may also let go of my Swan 350 and the Heathkit HW-101. Since my plans now include moving my entire shack up to Studio C, I really don’t have a lot of time to spend playing around with getting radios to work. I need to make space!
I need to measure my existing desks in the main shack, and then plan how they’ll go upstairs. Then I can plan my other tables. I plan to keep at least one 6-foot table dedicated to packing eBay items up to ship.
2021 PLANS? Yes! I have that Hallicrafters SX-101A receiver in the attic I need to get out of there; I have an FL-2100B amplifier, and various other radios to sell and junk to discard. My plan is to make as much room as I can and have efficent storage space in the attic so I can move extra radio gear in there. Wish me luck, hi hi!
73 es CUL … de KY4Z …. SK …. SK … (dit dit) ….