Issue #6 - Four Things Your Elmer Never Told You about Ham Radio

Tom,
I can definitely relate to you on your #3 about CW! I'm exactly the same as far as maintaining my copy speed, if I don't use it on a regular basis, which I try to do as much as I have time to, my speed suffers. I blame the chemotherapy drug Revlimid a.k.a. Lenalidomide that I take 21 out of every 28 days to keep multiple myeloma under control because the main side effect of it is short-term memory loss.
As far as your #4, I went with a friend, W3RAM, Russ, to the Shelby, NC Hamfest quite a few years ago and another ham had a 2-meter mobile he was asking $50 for, I think it was a Radio Shack HTX-242 if I remember correctly, and he even took us to his car that was parked close by at the booth/spot he had rented, hooked the radio up with an accessory plug and to a magnet mount antenna and he keyed up several repeaters and got good audio reports on all of them so Russ bought the radio. Russ hadn't had his ham license long at that time. Anyway. when Russ got the radio home he told me he couldn't key up any of the repeaters over a few miles away so I opened the rig up and it turned out the radio the guy sold him had a defective IC final and he had soldered a small hook-up wire from the collector on the driver transistor straight to the center pin on the SO-239 connector inside of the radio bypassing the defective IC final. It turned out that IC final cost almost $50 so Russ wound up with $100 in a used radio that was only worth around $50 in order to get it working good! I was amazed that a fellow ham would go to that length to make $50 and rip off another ham the way he had! I wish we could have remembered what he looked like or his callsign so we could have confronted him about it at the next year's Shelby Hamfest, but we couldn't. It's a sad state of affairs that people in the hobby would stoop so low as that! There's no integrity in anything anymore!
Oh yeah, one thing I've found as far as my CW copy speed, fortunately it does come back pretty fast once I start getting on the air more. I never thought I'd ever have this issue, but lately I'm having a problem copying slower CW speeds. I've gotten myself used to a faster character speed so when someone is sending around 15 wpm and have slowed down their character speed I have difficulty with it. I learned using the Farnsworth method they use on W1AW's code practice sessions. I wish they had the Koch method when I first started because in my humble opinion it's the better method to use since it starts you out from the get go with a 20 wpm character speed.

Very 73!
Cliff, KU4GW

 

I once sold a broken dual band transceiver to a guy from Erie PA, I told him that it had full output but it was an Alinco, need I say more.
The tuning knob and the frequency selector used what looked like matchbox car tires and the rubber rotted and all there was - was a nub where the rubber engaged the shaft.
And, the memory battery was dead so there was no memory - turn the radio off and you had to reprogram it.
Well he hooked it up to his packet set up, turned it on and never turned it off and 10 years later it is still on the air with zero problems!
I was forthright and honest and anyone that wanted it was welcome to it - $50 and every time I see him he says - it's still on the air!
My so called friends that offered me $20 for it - still wishes that they had bought it.

 

That's a funny example, but sure is the better way to sell a used piece of gear.