On 12/6/2012 7:53 PM, Wayne Burdick wrote:
In my teens, freshly licensed, I had a Heath DX20 and a Hallicrafters S38D. The highlight of my first few months was working a guy 2000 miles away on a 60-W-lamp dummy load and 6' of leaky RG58. I later upgraded to a Heath HW-16 and had a blast.
About a dozen years ago, I inherited an SX-28 in very pristine shape from the estate of Woody, W6ANX. I had one as a teen. For quite awhile, it held down a counter in the shack against gravity outages. I finally decided to enter an NAQP CW 40m using it and my old 40m ARC-5 still in the basement [Heath HP-23 power supply]. Results were mixed.
I managed to get shocked off the straight key several times [forgot about cathode keying], I discovered that operating in a 21st century contest with a straight key, pencil, and paper was a lot less fun than I had imagined it would be, and, after perhaps two hours, and 3 dozen reports of key clicks, I decided I'd adequately punched my nostalgia card and reverted to my brand new K3. I had a great time as a teenager with makeshift equipment, but of course I didn't know then what it would be like in 2010. And apparently, aging my ARC-5 in the basement for 55 years did not mellow the key clicks either.
73, Fred K6DGW - Northern California Contest Club - CU in the 2013 Cal QSO Party 5-6 Oct 2013 - www.cqp.org ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
