Quote:
Originally posted by RickB
I've been a Ham about 13 years, but I guess that I started listening to SW radio in the early sixties...been interested in it a loooong time and have had all kinds of stuff filter thru the shack here, but my favorites are Collins rigs because even as old as they are now, they just keep on chuggin! That and the 1KHz dial resolution makes finding stations a lot easier than bandspread type rigs like my HQ-180A, SX-100, HRO-60, NC-183D, or SX-16. The Drakes aren't bad either and I just sold my SR-400A on ebay....
That being said, though, hooking the NC-183D up to a Klipsch Heresy speaker is a revelation! There's an old saying,"Find them with a Collins, listen to 'em with a National!"
Unfortunately, SW broadcasting just ain't what it used to be! At the height of the cold war there was all kinds of stuff to listen to and get a laugh out of, Radio Moscow, Radio Tirana Albania, etc., had such a twisted view on world affairs that it was a great education listening to the "enemy"! I'm also an insomniac and I used to fall asleep listening thru an earphone to the BBC on my Sony 2010 or SW-77 on the nightstand next to the bed....but the BBC has reduced or killed its transmissions to the Americas, so it's usually "Coast to Coast AM" from WOAI that I fall asleep to now.....
That's just some of the newer stuff, I just don't have a good pic of the 51S-1/51J-4/R-390/R-390A/SPC-10 rack or the BC-610-I in the closet!
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Rick,
I just looked at your web page, and am very impressed. I recognize a lot of your old ham gear from the '60s, etc., Collins, Drake and the like. They don't make them like that anymore, believe me, though the Icom rigs are still great performers (I have an IC-725 I won in a hamfest ticket drawing 13 years ago and which is my main, and as I will explain later my only, rig at this time). BTW, what is your call sign?
I had a Heathkit DX40 transmitter, Hallicrafters SX101A Mark III receiver (with 10 MHz WWV--all seven dial scales lit up when the WWV receiver was operating--wow, what an effect!) and a 25' loaded vertical antenna when I was first licensed as Novice in 1972. Didn't make many contacts in those early days for a couple of reasons: one, I was in high school at the time and didn't have nearly the time to devote to the hobby as I do now (nearly had my entire station impounded in 1973 by my dad when my grades went down), and two, my transmitter had only one crystal (3.75 MHz, which in the early '70s was the top end of the 80-meter Novice band). I made exactly one out-of-state contact as a Novice, with W9PQO, J. Harold Gibson of Yorba Linda, California (in the '70s, when I contacted him, he was in South Bend, Indiana), now a Silent Key.
As I noted in my previous post, I have had several rigs since my Novice days. I don't have any of that gear anymore, having donated my Kenwood TS-530 to an amateur radio club in New York City shortly after moving to my present residence, and the rest of the gear having been disposed of by my dad's third wife (now his widow) after his death in late March 1998. She knows nothing about radio, amateur or otherwise, so every bit of my old stuff, including a Henry Radio Tempo/one 240-watt AM/CW/SSB transceiver, my Novice rig, and everything else but my Kenwood 530 went out with the trash!
!!!!!!!
Oh well. I wouldn't have had room for any of my old gear in my apartment anyhow, so maybe it was just as well, although it would have been much better if my Novice gear and the Tempo rig had been donated to a local ham club (if I had still been in my hometown when the gear was being disposed of, I would have seen to it that such action would have been taken--again, oh well. No use crying over spilt milk, I suppose. I had already moved by that time, so really did not see what was going on and did not learn of my gear having been disposed of until it was too late.)
My station now occupies a small space in my bedroom, with my computer and related gear in the main part of my apartment. I have a Barker & Williamson AP-10A apartment-portable antenna for HF, which works after a fashion for local 40-meter SSB contacts, but I have yet to find out how well it works for DX. Cannot use outdoor antennas due to lease restrictions.
My favorite mode is CW, but I cannot operate high power since my rig's 100-watt signals trip the GFCIs in my apartment. Guess I'll just have to try lower power or even QRP on one of the WARC expansion bands (12 or 17 meters; I think my AP10A antenna, even with the loading coil, is far too short for 30 [the whip is only some 51 inches long], although I made many contacts on that band with a 70' all-band dipole at my former residence in the mid-'80s through 1997).
I also operate 2-meter FM using an Icom IC-T22a 1.5-watt HT, with an MFJ 3/8-wave whip as an antenna.
That's my ham radio story in the smallest of nutshells, Rick. Good luck and DX, and all the best to you and yours. If I get my rig working (as I'm sure I will, eventually--it's only a matter of getting the antenna tuned up properly), I'll look for you on one of the HF bands.
73,
Jeff, WB8NHV
Licensed since 1972
Member ARRL
Member Lake County, Ohio, Amateur Radio Association (LCARA)