Hi Bob, K2KI & Company, Yeah, things sure have become disappointing. Too many hams have become Plug & Play. I've seldom owned new rigs. At the present time, my newest radio is 25 years old (an ICOM IC-740). It was a non-runner, that was easy to get going, and has a fantastic receiver. My favorite rigs (due to the fact that my favorite casual radio operating mode is AM), are over 50 years old. One of them (my Viking II), was a non-runner, that I bought for $75 last November. It was a pain at times (due to Hammy Hambone mods that were made to a few things) to get it going, but it has been on the air now for almost 2 months. It sounds great. AND, it sure was a good feeling to take a radio that nobody wanted (the thing hadn't been used in how many years - I had to spend over 20 minutes just vacuuming out the dust when I brought it home), and put it back on the air (the same thoughts hold true for my IC-740).
I'm am both baffled and saddened that so many (although not all) newbs have been indictrinated with this black box, plug & play mentality. It's too complicated to load up a tube or hybrid rig - huh?! When I was a Novice and young General in the late 70s & through the 80s, it was pretty much a given that unless you had the cash, you'd get something with tubes for you first rig. At W9YT (the Univ. of Wisconsin Ham Club, station), when I graduated in 1987, we still used a TS-830S as the main HF station. We had a homebrew KW with 3-500Zs in it. As was mentioned in a thread that's similar to this, that's in progress on QRZ.com, loading upan amp is like loading up a tube rig (BTW, the majority of responentson that thread are just as digusted by that article as we are). There's something wrong, when a new Extra asks, "how do I make a dipole?" That was a question on my Novice test (on Xmas Eve Day) in 1977! Don't laugh, hams have already been asked this question. I briefly knew a ham a year and a half ago,(via a Yahoo ham group I'm no longer active in - the group owner's a bit of a "my opinions are the onloy ones that count" person), who, whenever somebody mentioned some cool portable antenna they'd built, would always ask, "gee, where can I buy one?" It was finally pointedout to the man, that wile plug & play is OK, building you own antenna is even better. 73, Ellen - AF9J ______________________________________________________________ Our Main Website: http://www.amfone.net AMRadio mailing list Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ List Rules (must read!): http://w5ami.net/amradiofaq.html List Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/amradio Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.html Post: mailto:[email protected] To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body.
