Something For Nothing

N5JO writes "
I have noticed an epiphenomenon on the Wanted to Buy portion of the Swapmeet site of QRZ.com. All too frequently, it goes something like this:



WTB xxx transceiver. Must be in mint condition, no scratches,
dings, mobile use or exposed to tobacco smoke. Manual and
original box mandatory. You pay shipping. I don't make much
money/don't have a lot to spend/I just got married/my dog died
and I have his funeral to pay for/is there anyone out there that
can help a fellow ham by giving me this radio that must be
immaculate and flawless in every respect?



You get the picture. Whining raised to a new art form. Look, I am
as compassionate as the next guy. I hope everyone has a great life,
hope all hams eventually become independently wealthy with a great
looking XYL, smart kids and a totally fulfilling and long existence
on this beautiful planet. But...PLEASE STOP TELLING ME HOW MISERABLE
YOUR LIFE IS!!!!! I am truly sorry you don't have all the money in
the world to spend on this wonderful hobby. But...NEITHER DO I. I
would love to have five 90 foot towers on a hilltop overlooking Mission Bay in San Diego, each with stacked monobanders. Not to
mention a 756 Pro II with an Alpha do-everything linear, satellite
rigs and giga-element arrays for EME. But...I CAN'T AFFORD ANY OF
THESE THINGS!!!!



So what do I do? I make do with 4 year old Kenwood HF rig and a
homebrew 87 foot long wire antenna, which is at least 20 feet off the ground in my antenna-restricted suburban neighborhood. I usually operate at QRP power so my $1.95 antenna doesn't TVI the XYL's sitcom. Do I want more goodies, better QTH, etc? Of course. But, IT IS NOT IN THE CARDS RIGHT NOW. So, I plan for a time when some(never all)of my dream station MIGHT come together. But even if
my rigs stay modest for the rest of my life, I have had one hell of
a good time with this hobby. I wish those of which I speak would just "can it" and enjoy whatever they "can" afford right now. If you
are totally unsatisfied with your station, may I offer you 3 possible
remedies...



1) Introduce a kid to the hobby and inspire them to new heights
in their life. The joy you get out of it will be much more gratifying than that new toy you want. And it won't cost you a dime.



2) Save whatever money you can scrape together for your next hardware goal. This will take (dare I say it?) SACRIFICE. Please
don't bore me with how tough your economic situation is...somebody
has it much worse than you.



3) Grow up. Nobody guaranteed you every little material thing you ever wished for.



Some of you won't like my thoughts about this. If the 3 suggestions outlined above don't seem to relieve your anger, go find a homeless
guy and tell him how tough your life is.



73,


Mike"

 

I agree entirely. "I used to feel bad because I had no shoes, but then I met a man who had no kilowatt amplifier" scenarios are getting really old.

Regardless of anyone's station in life, I hope that some of the authors of these hard luck want ads might take heed and realize that those of us who might possibly be able to help are intentionally avoiding you because of your attitudes. I automatically skip over the "I don't have much money" ads without reading past that line, and I think most prudent people do.

It would be far wiser, and probably more fruitful, to simply post what you're looking for and hope someone has it at an affordable price.

WB2WIK/6

 

As I wipe the tears from my eyes when I read the pleas mentioned, besides for the poor mouth routine, I've noticed have one more thing these folks have in common; they were able to pony up the sheckles for a computer and an ISP to access the net. 'Tis a 'puzzlement'.

 

I know where you're coming from Mike. I take exception though to one thing you said. There is a group out there that is promising to give you everything from the cradle to the grave.
It's called the Democratic Party ! They're montra IS :"Your prosperity stems from us because you can't do it." This in turn has created a sector of society who believes those of us who have worked for what we have, did it UNFAIRLY !!!! Therefore they are ENTITLED to what they want. So they elect people who promise to take it from the Earners and give it to the whiners.
I fell for the line once and have lived to regret it. Bottom line...... set your price. If they can't pay it ..... oh well !!!!

Bud WD8BIL

 

AW come on! Don't you know they walked, in the snow, (over two feet deep) for miles to the public library just so they could get on the net!
Interesting point anyway. I'd bet they have a better computer than I do.

W7WV Ken

 

A-men, Mike. Where has American self-reliance gone? Too many people have that "world owes me a living" philosophy. Tough. You can't always get what you want (see Rolling Stones). That's life ! Get used to it.

 

Ok Mike, Well you havn't attracted any bashers yet but one fellow did mange to invent a political statement out of it and you did mange to invent a new word....gotta love the english language, it keeps evolving and all are free to addvaircate to it at any time. Actually I'm enjoying this postive responsal thing here. Bored people keep looking up my call and before you know it I'll be up to 300 lookups. My goal is to become the most looked up hammy here for which I'll be expecting sort sort of free award....AND IT HAD BETTER BE CHEAP!!!!! Which brings me to my next point, apparently you didn't read the QRZ article here from one Flloyd, posted 12/12/01 about "

 

[above article was submitted accidentally before it was finished, here is the rest]

"YOU DON'T HAVE TO SHOUT"..so stop shouting will ya?

Your idea is totally valid Mike, but my particular experience in this field comes from my sellin' stuff down yonder at the hamfest. Now I don't have all day long for 2 days to sit on my barrel and try to fetch absolute highest top dollar for that 35 year old JC Penny 23 Channel mobile rig and last RCA connector which I found rolling around of the floor of my truck on the way there. Hell I got turnips to dig and cotton to pick back at my turnip and cotton ranch. I wanna sell my stuff, grab a funnel cake at the concession stand and hit the road 'cause I gotta git back to the ranch and..well...you know. So I may have an item that's truly worth, say $100 anywhere-anytime. So I'll offer that puppy up at say $60 or $70 bucks so I can make a quick sell and somebody happy...dang those funnel cakes are smellin' mighty good. Well invariably I have to tolerate a long line of the aforementioned cheap bastards who want to ask me if I'll take $30bucks for my $100 item that's already been more than fairly priced. Ya'll get real in the boneyard will ya fellas? Now a bunch of ya go and look up my call please as I'm wanting to get my mits on that free prize from QRZ....

 

Buy cheap, sell high..sure we're not talking about Capitalism? : P

 

I have to admit that it is nice to dream about
owning a IC-781 or being able to work a full
2.25 kW of power on HF, but that's all it is.
It's just a dream. Not everyone can drive a
Ferrari or live in a Mansion!

About 7 years ago, I managed to buy beat up old
trashy rigs on a paperboy's income. That suited
me just fine. I loved pounding the brass on a
beat up old Yeasu FT-901DM on a 54 ft piece of
wire on a partially burned out antenna tuner.
(The window the antenna went through had
somehow flattened the wire, causing it to act
like a fuse when I keyed up. You try tuning up
on 80 metres with only 6 feet of wire by
accident! I didn't know until the knobs on the
tuner started to melt! At least it was 1:1 SWR.)
Anyway, with this hacked antenna tuner (It was an
MFJ BTW, but I could have homebrewed something.)
and this beat up rig, I had some of the best
ragchews that I can ever remember and this was
even during a lousy time of the sunspot cycle on
160 and 80 metres. (I was limited due to 5 WPM CW)

These days, I'm living in a Condo and I know that
working on HF is an absolute no-no. Not unless I
QRP and even then I know that if I had some sort
of apartment antenna C-Clamped onto a coffee table
I'd be lucky to be able to work any DX at all.
Just being able to work on VHF is good enough for
now.. That is, until I can get married, buy a
house and convince the XYL that the tower won't
kill any wayward birds.

As far as I am concerned, a rig that I don't have
to tune up is a luxury. A rig that has memory
channels, that's a luxury too. I just got back into the hobby about a month ago after a 7 year hiatus and all it took was a beat-up old IC-2AT HT and a FT-720R for the car.

I think that even as a Ham today, I am living in
the lap of luxury. I think it's very easy to
forget that HAM's of the 10's, 20's and 30's
didn't have the luxury of buying a rig, they had
to build them. Sure, they might have looked like
a dogs breakfast but they worked! After playing
with a 50's Viking AM Transmitter & 50's Hammarlund reciever, everything else is luxury.

Anyway, just wanted to put in my $0.02 in..

 

Nice thoughts mike, to be honest I loved every word! when I started out in ham radio, even the names where out of my reach lol but did I cry? no I went and took a cobra 2000 and turned it into the most beautiful rig I ever did see! said good bye to all those 11 meter channels and hello ten meters! hey I could only do 25 watts max, but that was the fun of it ! getting out as far as I could with what little I had! of course after that I was able to purchase an atlas 210x and some heathkits, ( which needed work, but hey that is why I got them! ) and with a good friend who knew anything you wanted to about radio, we fixed them up! and enjoyed talking on those! now I am lucky I have a Icom IC-735! and that baby is my pride and joy worked hard to get that!but in the begining you took what you could get and did the bets you can, when life hands you lemons make lemon aide!

73's N1LEF Bill

 

Hello, Mike. I do see your point. When I was a kid I spent all of one summer picking up aluminum cans and selling them to the recycler. I ended up with about 100 dollars after some help from birthday money.
Well, to the point of the story......I went out one day with my parents to garage sale. After poking around in a box in the corner, I found a Hallicrafter transmitter and a Heathkit HW-100 with no finals. The seller said it came from a recently deceased relative and they would let it all go for 100 dollars. I was in luck!!!!
Anyways, I went and drug my elmer to the find and he said it looked like a good deal. There was even a J-38 key in the box! After constructing a T/R relay to make the Hallicrafter/Heathkit pair work, I built a 40-meter dipole from some scrap housewire obtained while demolishing a house with my dad. I logged many contacts with that old mismatched pair and loved every minute of it. (This was when Novices only had CW privleges.) Now that I am an adult and have slowly built a decent station I still remember the great fun I had for the cheapest price. It just goes to show that equipment doesn't have to be new, pretty, and expensive to do the job.
73 de Korey--KA5VCQ/4--Fort Bragg, NC

 

good comments Mike. One additional one though is... The "Ship it to me free, its for a ARES group". Now before I get flamed, let me say there are many excellent ARES groups out there, and I think we all need to support at least one of them. But I think you need to keep your support in your own local area, not some other state 2000 miles away. While I am on my soapbox, let me add one more that kind of bugs me, it's the "You ship it to me, if I like it, I'll pay for it later", now what bus did this guy fall off of?
As others have said, "just my .02 cents!"

 

We had a 7 lander that showed up in Portland, Maine and from the day he arrived he was on the air begging. It is amazing the stuff that hams shuttled over to him, radios, power supplies, antennas, mikes,etc. Of course he sold everything a few weeks later but continued to beg on the air and whine on how poor he was. He was milking the SS disability fund and could not work, but when he won a radio at a hamfest he threw his cane and flew up to the stage to get his new radio. A miracle happened that day! He has since moved down the coast and I heaer he is pulling the begging stuff all over again.

 

I personally saw a ham go to a widows house and buy her SK's radio for next to nothing with the old "It's for the community and George would want this.." Before anyone throws stones, how many of the "Whiners about Whiners" took advantage of someone either through a rig you knew was trashed and sold it anyway to some dumb kid who was starting out and laughed your way to the bank. Seems to me the ones yelling the loudest should look in their own back yard. This burns me..