Short Takes! Comments on Short Takes from "Trials and Errors"

Speaking of rudeness on 40 and such, I was licensed in '77 and enjoyed checking into the MidCars net on 40 meters...nice bunch of folks. I recently moved to Florida and checked into the SouthCars net. I was met with rudeness by the net control and told, paraphrasing, that I needed a Blowhard Flamethrower 5000 amplifier to work 40 meters and have a nice day...last time I ever check into THAT net. I've worked the world barefoot and a wire. Must be the season...

 

If there's any one person who needs to maintain a degree of neutrality and a welcoming attitude, it's the net control.

 

Bravo on the last paragraph! I enjoy YAESU FUSION on vhf/uhf for that info there in the header. It gives, call, sometimes name, beam heading and distance if the radio is equipped with built in gps, which most of the radios are. To have this header on HF would certainly make some lids popular! Thanks for the incite!

 

I too have run into what I call MOTA. "Morons on the Air". We have one that has a habit of visiting our early evening Omiss 40 meter net on 7.185, causing interruptions with music, etc. For the most part, I do not run into too much of the "MOTA organization members". Given my space & HOA, I run 40 to 10 meters, SSB only. I do not have the space for 60, 80, or 160.

Despite some of these issues, I still enjoy my radio daily, I operate an average of 4 hrs daily. I look forward to all the great people I have come to know via the bands, and nets. I encourage new Hams to join the nets, this is a great way to learn, and it is exactly what I did when I got my general license in August of 2021. My first antenna were Shark sticks, managed to get all 50 states using the stick, coax going under the garage door from my Durango and into the 7300. The issue was snow, not great to have to go outside to change bands, LOL!

Mac OS vs Windows. Well, I am not changing to MS Windows, so I am limited on software, however I haven't missed much because I am strictly an SSB operator. I do have an interest in whisper signals, I think that is pretty cool. This year, I am moving to an IC 7610, and a DX Engineering receive mag loop with a rotor. I need to set that up, particularly for 40. Here in the valley where I live, 40 meter is noisy, tough band. I think a receive loop will help a lot.

Looking forward to 2024. Happy New Year's to all. Great Job on the ongoing articles, always good info!!! Thank you for that.

Louis
WW7GBA

 

Great comments, thanks Louis. The radio/antenna combo you are thinking about sounds like a great idea. The 7610 is a fantastic step up, and I've been looking at it as well. My friend Hank (N6HJ) loves his and has been pushing it as an upgrade for my 7300 for many months. Let us know how you do, Dave W7DGJ

 

I definitely will. I am very excited about that radio. I am thinking of using my 7300 for POTA.SOTA, or buying a Yaesu 891 for portable use. Once my shack is done, I will move on to getting setup for POTA. Works in progress, I guess. LOL

Louis
WW7GBA

 

Happy New Year Dave. Hope its filled with adventure.

On LIDS:
Seems to be worse now than when I started. But even then we had some "interesting" groups on 80M.
One I remember was the "National Association of Students and Christians ." Their actual name was evocative of a group of male animals and fowl kept for breeding. Same initials. NASAC.
They were often foul but generally very creative and funny, like when they'd move onto a frequency claiming to be the FCC and then proceed to shut the frequency down for national security purposes.
Hilarity often ensued. Sometimes people were offended.

Sounds like the current crowd of miscreants is hateful and stupid. What to do about it? Nothing new to add.

Then there's QRZ LIDS. The amount of bad internet behaviour here is pretty astonishing as evidenced by thread-crapping, off topic posting, ad-hominem attacks, the works.
I decided to give it another year, but I'm really unsure if that was the right call. We'll see. I do enjoy your column.


On antennas;
I had a boss once say "It's OK to disagree, but it's not OK to be disagreeable. "
I thought that was great insight.

Very few hams have the time or inclination (myself included) to do meaningful antenna performance comparisons.
That means everything anybody says is anecdotal and should be treated as such.
If someone bad-mouths a product or antenna type, I always ask:
So tell me, what was your personal experience with this antenna?
I usually get "Sorry OM, band's changed, lots of QSB and QRN, 73".

 

Often when someone badmouths a product its either they have had a poor experience with it or it did not live up to the hype or their inflated expectations.

But sometimes its hearsay and they are just parroting someone else.

I enjoy kits and homebrew because the discovery is fun.
Participating on nets, helping repair gear, and socializing with like minds.
Laughing at the elmers good stories and benifitting from their knowledge.
And i particularily enjoy watching the good youtube videos especially the antenna homebrews.
Yeah you'll get a few lids here and there in any field, but its the ones who persist in being obnoxious that tend to annoy me.

 

I took all three tests in August and September of 2021, practicing with hamstudy.org. I didn't just memorize the answers, but looked at the explanations and made sure I understood why they were correct. Usually it came down to introductory physics but sometimes it was just the law and there could be any number of reasons for that being the way it is. Some things you do have to simply memorize.

At that time there were very few tests that were done in person, much less organized training classes so I took the online practice exams. Although I'm sure I would have had more in-depth understanding from a real class I passed the tests handily, doing much better on the Extra than on the others. I still haven't done much with the licenses and figure if I need to learn more there are plenty of ways to do that.

I'm happy with the results and especially the cost and time /benefits but can see that others might do better the other way.

 

Thanks John. Surprising you did much better on the Extra - that's a toughie! Thanks for your input, Dave W7DGJ