Jan. 2, 2011, 1:55 a.m. — I’ve been both amazed and appalled during my late-night listening this evening/morning on the 75-meter band. Two friends who apparently live in the same community in North Carolina are using a 75-meter frequency for their “local” discussion … and its been quite a learning experience for this listener.
In fact, the pair ID’ed about 10 minutes ago after talking nearly 25 minutes without mentioning a callsign. One of the men has been in the ham game a while; the other guy was first licensed 2 years ago, and upgraded to General about 3 weeks ago. The experienced ham told the newbie — very matter-of-factly — that “I think we ought to ID every 30 minutes or so.” Thirty minutes? Did Part 97 change when I wasn’t paying attention??
Having listened to these two chat the past hour or so, I’ll admit I really wasn’t surprised at anything these two said. The newbie, bless his heart, is full of questions about ham radio (as we all were); he’s also full of misinformation about ham radio (also as we all were, at least initially).
The “noob” (quoting my kids’ terminology) said he was trying to buy the matching accessories for his Yaesu FT-897D. He had the LDG matching meter; he has the YT-100 on his wish list, as well as the “official” Yaesu power supply. Apparently, he believes that it sounds more impressive to other hams to announce how many of the matching accessories you have; he also seems to think the matching accessories will perform better than non-Yaesu accessories.
What a gauntlet newcomers to HF must run, particularly when the arrive on 75 meters and go searching for advice. One of the things they must understand is that every ham’s opinion of “the best way” to do something is going to differ with another ham’s ideas; it doesn’t make either wrong.
The newbie claimed that his wire dipole was resonant across the entire 75 meter band. The other ham questioned his claim — gently, so not to beat him up — suggesting that it wasn’t resonant, but had a wide acceptable SWR range. The newbie didn’t understand the difference, but eventually he will. Wisely, the old timer understood what he was saying and didn’t beat him over the head with the difference in terminology.
The newbie was also sweating what type of amplifier and outboard tuner he should get, since they won’t match the Yaesu exactly. He wanted to get the LDG YT-100 tuner before he bought the amp; the Old Timer had a hard time explaining to him that the tuner wouldn’t work with an amplifier, and that he would need a tuner capable of handling higher wattage.
I remember my newbie days, and some of the mangled concepts that I had to eventually straighten out. I almost made my first rig a military surplus rig from Fair Radio, a GRC-9 transceiver that operated up to 12 MHz CW/AM. I’m glad I was encouraged to buy something else, as the surplus rig was a crap shoot at best.