Monday, Jan. 10, 2022
I’ve been on the air just about every night on my CW traffic net and enjoying the hell out of it. Since Christmas, I found a low-buck external VFO for my TS-520S.
Well, “low-buck” in this case is defined as “$100 or less.” The VFO was untested and pretty damn dirty. Fortunately, when it arrived it was more or less intact and complete. I scrubbed it clean with some cleaner and elbow grease, and it cleaned up quite well. I had also ordered a VFO cable to connect the rig and VFO.
Fortunately, the VFO works well, and I’m enjoying having the ability to set one VFO on 3927 (or whatever frequency I’m listening to) and leave the external VFO on 3549 kHz for the CW net.
The only problem I’m having is that the CW filter I installed in the TS-520S doesn’t seem to be working in CW mode. I’m thinking that one of the pins may not be well soldered. I hate to tear back into it, but I’m going to have to do that. There have been several nights when I’ve wanted to run the TS-520S to check in on the net and there was just too many signals.
I’m also building an inexpensive CW filter kit from Vectronics (i.e. MFJ) that I picked up on eBay. It doesn’t have a case, but I think I can come up with one. Anyway, the filter will go with the Kenwood in the event that I ‘can’t get the damn filter operating properly. There’s a chance that the damn filter I have is bad, I suppose.
EBAY SALES. I have sold two CW bugs — a Hi-Mound coffin bug and a 1961 Blue Racer. I have a bunch to list, so maybe I can get pictures shot this week.
ARRL MEMBERSHIP? Well, after being a member of the League for a year, I let my membership lapse. I hate to say it, but I just didn’t get much out of membership. I really didn’t read the magazine when I got it. I don’t really care to go to club meetings (and don’t know when they are to be honest). I’m just a lone wolf ham, hi hi …. I realized recently that I’ve become the old grouchy hams that never came to meetings when we (my wife and I) were trying to rebuild the radio club.
ARES = WHACKER? Its going to be an entry for another night, but my interest (and belief) in the value of ARES is damn near ZERO.
Twenty years ago, our radio club members volunteered for our local EMA director. We did weather spotting and had a weather net on 2 meters as well as on the VHF EMA repeater.
We got a new EMA director a dozen years or so, and combined with the many upgrades to our local public service communication systems, there’s really precious little need for any backup communicators.
One of our local ham operators was named second in command to the former EMA director, and he ended up embarassing the director and the rest of EMA with his country accent on the radio. He also reported funnel clouds that weren’t really funnel clouds, prompting a false tornado warning.
Anyway, the weather spotting was deemed no longer necessary, and the ham radio involvement petered out.
When I was Section Manager, my job was to talk up ARES and try to build it. The problem is that the ARES program was a WHACKER MAGNET. You do all this shit, these exercises, send the reports, blah blah blah, and its basically just busy work. Period.
I should have quit the SM job after 2 terms. I stayed for eight years, and by the end I was burned out and really didn’t like dealing with the League’s bullshit anymore. I’ve wondered if I would ever want to be SM again, and so far, the answer is no. I love going to the hamfests, but that’s about it.
Enough of my bitching. … 73 es CUL … de KY4Z … SK SK …. (dit dit)