ham radio

ReloadRon,

Got my novice in 1959 (KN4NFF) when I was 11. That puts us at a similar age. Had to have a paper route to pay for my rig (Knight kit R100 rcvr, T50 xmiter. TORE UP the airwaves). Always lusted after the Hkit DX -60 (a final 6146 with a cap!. How cool was that after a 6L6?).

Anyway, failed the tech test and let it all go until about 4 years ago. Finally got my Technician, immediately applied for a vanity call and got my K4NFF that I should have gotten lo those many years ago. AND got me DX-60A! Gotta love Ebay.

As for as the relevance of Ham Radio, have you seen the Terminator series Movies? In Terminator III what was the form of comm after SkyNet took over?? Old tube type AM and CW, that's what.

I think maybe having to change the water in our bomb shelter (coal room at our house in KY) majorly warped me.

Hi Cowboy

Yeah, I will be 62 in a few weeks so I figure we are close in the aging process, Back then my friend had a DX60 which we managed to build a linear for. My early stuff was a collection of surplus ARC 5 transmitters and a hand me down National NC 173 receiver, I finally got the DX40. I think in my mom's house basement I may still have a pair of 1625s from those ARC5 units.

Thinking in a few years I may get back into it. Looking at retirement and doing the old things I enjoyed so much. Those were some really great old days.

73's
Ron

NP2OK here. Born in Y'town, OH left in the '60's. Currently in PR, don't like the cold. I've got an R2368, but have lost the oscillator. Also have an Icom, but my Win98 has developed an install boot disk, so I haven't been on. No Tx but enjoy the SSB and starting the code lessons.

Move over as sitting in Cleveland, Ohio I could enjoy PR about now, even though it has been a very mild winter.

Ron

Reloadron said:

....... My early stuff was a collection of surplus ARC 5 transmitters and a hand me down National NC 173 receiver, I finally got the DX40. I think in my mom's house basement I may still have a pair of 1625s from those ARC5 units ...............

73's
Ron

Click to expand...

Havent heard the ARC5 mentioned for years ... The "Breadslicers" (variable caps for the youngun's) from them were very popular for those of us that built our own HF antenna tuners

cheers
Dave
VK2TDN

cowboybob said:

As for as the relevance of Ham Radio, have you seen the Terminator series Movies? In Terminator III what was the form of comm after SkyNet took over?? Old tube type AM and CW, that's what.
.

Click to expand...

That's exactly one of the scenes I think of when People ask me about HAM radio and the point of it all, also while trying to explain the difference between it and CB.. And the full out end of the world scenario doesn't necessarily have too happen as just recently the east coast had that "earthquake" the end of last summer. It absolutely swamped the cellular network for about 4 hours, probably with pointless texts and phone calls from people. Well no worries, was on the boat and managed too use the HAM radio too quickly make sure my family was ok, and back to fishing I went.

Point is even during minor events the cell network is very weak. If you have a simple HT you can use IRLP to talk around the world, and if the end is truly near there is always HF Rigs to link far away people and computers with nothing more than a radio and a simple wire antenna...