More 2 way radio stuff - ham and 11 meter guys (cb)

[Wallythacker]

I recently bought 2 gadgets for what is a cheap price in the ham world for what they do

The meter is specifically geared to 1-60Mhz, that puts it's center of measurement almost smack in the middle of the CB band. And for hams it's basically smack in the middle of the very top end of 10m BUT it happily goes up into 6m band and covers all of it.

A guy with mad skillz reviewed it on utube and cut it down until it was pointed out to him how his analysis was seriously flawed and the meter actually performed pretty damn well for a ~$75 gadget

My second score was mad cheap, $45 at Amazon. This antenna analyzer is a clone of a ham's workbench project and it exists in incredible variety, sizes, price, abilities.

My device can sweep from basically 0Mhz to 999Mhz. That's respectable and then some. There isn't any part of any ham band I'm ever going to use that my gadget won't cover. This thing will even calculate the length of a run of coax and well as the properties of either the coax, antenna, or both!!!

I discovered a chunk of name brand coax that was toast, it was nearly a dead short with no impedance. Running full power from my rig into that may have driven the final stage of my ham radio output into the danger zone. Older radios, (I have 1) didn't protect themselves from such scenarios. It was only when computer controls get added into ham radios did automatic power dial back protection become standard.

So between the meter and the analyzer I should never be wasting RF energy simply heating up wires because of poor impedance matching. Those days are gone. Now when I go QRP (reduced power intentionally) down to 5 watts I can be sure my antenna system is radiating all 5 of those watts. As a very rough example IF: your impedance is 2:1 (100 ohms) then 50 watts of the 100 watts you're sending to the antenna simply heats the wire. It's lost.

I'm splitting my post into two to avoid extreme clutter in either.

[Wallythacker]

Second part:

This is my ham station under construction. Most of my gear has sat in boxes since 2020 when covid hit. I should have spend all my spare time on the radio but IIRC the bands were terrible. Maybe they weren't. In any case the gear was crazy cheap compared to now.

There's an incredible lifetime warranty HF antenna that I watched climb in price from about $600 US for a complete kit to $1400 and now you must purchase really expensive add-ons (which are listed as No Longer For Sale, WTF is that about?) So it goes without saying I won't be buying a Scorpion antenna any time soon, if ever.

The bottom row are my HF rigs. The center is the oldest, around 1993. HF only, Still performs like brand new. I tune it up every 3-5 years. Decent computer control possible. It was my first HF radio, bought new for $849, not used much, it's a spare.
The far left is 1999. An early all mode all band mobile rig. It had a bad reputation, yet mine has never had a problem. Very good computer controllability. The far right is my main rig. Made in 2005. Great computer controllability. Loaded with nice features. My all time favorite all band all mode radio. Think of it. 20 year old radios performing perfectly and with all the features I need. Can you imagine still using Windows ME on a 433mhz Celeron or 500Mhz Pentium III? UGH! Yet my radios are great, 2005 Toyotas are still good for the most part. It's all relative.

Oh, powering this small fleet of radios is handled by one single massive 52 AMP DC power supply. I have a backup DC supply of 21 AMPS and I plan wire up a deep cycle battery in parallel to handle blackouts or even brownouts.

The upper deck are my antenna tuners, antenna switches, accessories, handy talkies and whatnot.
Everything has the serials recorded and etched in, it's all listed on my insurance. No worries about loss. The house is well alarmed .and has many other security enhancements.

Finally outside. You'd not know I'm a ham unless you spotted my G5RV folded dipole. Since it's a simple black wire antenna it's hard to spot. I also have a discone about 40' up on a semi-guyed aluminum chimney mount mast. Although the discone has Zero gain I can transmit anywhere from 25Mhz and up with a great SWR. I have a 15 foot long 15 element 2m beam but no rotor. If I mounted it I would have to choose a direction. Pointing at Toronto should yield the most repeaters, many of which are mounted 1700" AGL on the CN Tower.

My vehicles are another matter I'll tackle before the snow flies. This year I promised myself to have all bands in a least 1 car (HF/VHF/UHF) The little Yaesu I posted earlier will be a Mirage Radio and either the 1999 Yaesu or a yet to be purchased QRP radio in the $500 region will live in the Saturn. It's roomier in there so I'm leaning to a more featured radio. It's a fun hobby. I love talking to people out of the blue from who knows where. It's the ultimate party line.

[Eggman]

Wow that's a lot of equipment. Looks like you have a lot of money invested.

[Johnny Mullet]

Same with the CB world. CB = "Constantly Buying"

[Wallythacker]

Wow that's a lot of equipment. Looks like you have a lot of money invested.

As Johnny says, always buying and selling. You do it right and you can usually come out a bit ahead each time. The secret is buying a lot when an older ham passes and most remaining family just want it cleared out. Sometimes the older ham has stuff so old nobody cares about it. Sometimes it turns out to be gold. Some of the old Heathkit stuff now commands crazy high prices. Heath made an amplifier in the 60's, sold for $199. A perfect example of these now sells routinely for $1000.

If you only buy one setup when you start out like lots of guys did, they dropped $2-4k on a station from the get go. Like cars, new ham stuff loses value but not as fast. Back to the first time guy, in 5-7 years when he either wants to move up or get out his stuff is close to the bottom of the depreciation cycle. Some great buys can be had. I usually buy my HF radios when they are 10+ years old.

I got lucky with COVID. So many hams sold so much good stuff, this was before the price explosion in everything. What they did locked inside for two years with no radios was a mystery. I also get a lot of people had to sell everything they could convert to cash because of reduced work, no work, etc. Anyhow, I went on a spree as so much was so cheap. Now I've been selling. I've pretty much recovered all I spent with some healthy profits. When I'm done selling all of what you see there will have set me back in the low to mid 4 figures. With a single mid range radio these days going for nearly $2k with some accessories I won't have a lot more than that invested in total, and I'll have 3 excellent HF radios, two modern high end car radios and advanced handy talky. Plus my antennas and meters and power supplies are all paid for in that sum. Some friends play adult hockey. Two guys binged on new skates. Well over $600 each pair they said. My other friend paid $1400 for goalie pads. Hobbies ae all relative I guess.

I just happy I can still afford some nice stuff for my radio hobby. I used to love cameras but the whole digital thing ruined it for me. My thrill was developing and printing my own color slides and enlargements. When each click of the shutter will cost you a $1 or more (color negative film/slides/chemicals/paper) you tend to think a lot more about lighting and composition, the subject and the overall process. Now since there's effectively no errors and taking 1000 images costs you the same as taking 36 the modern approach is to hold the shutter down and hope one of the 1000 images is good enough to enlarge and display.

I still find personally that I'm lucky to get 1 image in 200 that is good enough to display.

Anyhow, :constantly buying" says it well.

[Wallythacker]

Wow that's a lot of equipment. Looks like you have a lot of money invested.

As Johnny says, always buying and selling. You do it right and you can usually come out a bit ahead each time. The secret is buying a lot when an older ham passes and most remaining family just want it cleared out. Sometimes the older ham has stuff so old nobody cares about it. Sometimes it turns out to be gold. Some of the old Heathkit stuff now commands crazy high prices. Heath made an amplifier in the 60's, sold for $199. A perfect example of these now sells routinely for $1000.

If you only buy one setup when you start out like lots of guys did, they dropped $2-4k on a station from the get go. Like cars, new ham stuff loses value but not as fast. Back to the first time guy, in 5-7 years when he either wants to move up or get out his stuff is close to the bottom of the depreciation cycle. Some great buys can be had. I usually buy my HF radios when they are 10+ years old.

I got lucky with COVID. So many hams sold so much good stuff, this was before the price explosion in everything. What they did locked inside for two years with no radios was a mystery. I also get a lot of people had to sell everything they could convert to cash because of reduced work, no work, etc. Anyhow, I went on a spree as so much was so cheap. Now I've been selling. I've pretty much recovered all I spent with some healthy profits. When I'm done selling all of what you see there will have set me back in the low to mid 4 figures. With a single mid range radio these days going for nearly $2k with some accessories I won't have a lot more than that invested in total, and I'll have 3 excellent HF radios, two modern high end car radios and advanced handy talky. Plus my antennas and meters and power supplies are all paid for in that sum. Some friends play adult hockey. Two guys binged on new skates. Well over $600 each pair they said. My other friend paid $1400 for goalie pads. Hobbies ae all relative I guess.

I just happy I can still afford some nice stuff for my radio hobby. I used to love cameras but the whole digital thing ruined it for me. My thrill was developing and printing my own color slides and enlargements. When each click of the shutter will cost you a $1 or more (color negative film/slides/chemicals/paper) you tend to think a lot more about lighting and composition, the subject and the overall process. Now since there's effectively no errors and taking 1000 images costs you the same as taking 36 the modern approach is to hold the shutter down and hope one of the 1000 images is good enough to enlarge and display.

I still find personally that I'm lucky to get 1 image in 200 that is good enough to display.

Anyhow, :constantly buying" says it well.

edit

What's funny is the largest most impressive looking radio lower center is my original purchase 30+ years ago. It might be considered archaic beside my 2005 Icom (lower right) but if you bought a radio to talk and have fun with, the old Yaesu is actually easier to learn and use than newer radios. The Yaesu manual. 30 some pages, lots of anecdotes, notes and off topic info within. The Icom manual? Nearly 200 pages, most of it condensed abbreviated and still sends you off for further reading. I learned my Yaesu in an afternoon. I'm still learning my Icom 4 years in.

[CROSSBOLT]

How do you like your what looks like a G-90?

73 Karl KI4ZUQ

[Wallythacker]

How do you like your what looks like a G-90?

73 Karl KI4ZUQ

If you are referring to the lower right rig that's an Icom IC7000. It sure looks like a G90 doesn't it? Makes me think the G90 guys looked at the Icom and figured since it's out of production for 15 years Yaesu won't squawk if they copy the look. Funny as i have a G90 in a box and I never made the connection the two look so similar.

[Johnny Mullet]

I have a Ham license, but rarely use it. I don't like the idea of people looking you up and waiting for you to screw up and get reported to the FCC or local club for breaking the rules. CB radio is 40 free channels in the 11 meter band allocated for "Citizens Band" which is license free and basically the "wild west" of radio communications. Ham operators have the 10 meter and 12 meter band which are very similar to the 11 meter CB band, but they hardly use it. Instead, I hear many hams on CB band with their high powered ham rigs taking advantage of the traffic on the CB band.

I am not making an argument about CB vs Ham. I am just stating I prefer CB radio and it''s comeback since the pandemic has really made CB popular again. Since we are near the peak of solar cycle 25 anyone can turn on a CB radio and hear the entire world talking during the day since propagation is heavy. Anyone trying CB right now would be discouraged with not being able to hear your buddy 10 miles away over some loud mouth in the desert 2,000 miles away. The only time CB can be used for local comms right now is early morning and after sunset when the propagation or "skip" is quiet. That is the thing though. Some people enjoy making contacts 100's or 1000's of miles away and could care less about talking local.

Anyway, I have a CB in my Mirage, my Geo Metro, my Bus, and I even have a base station and a walkie talkie or two. Here is my latest base station deal. l had this beautiful 1977 Craig L-231 base station that had some issues. I was trying to get it fixed, but no CB shop anywhere would even touch it since they were not familiar with the chassis even though I had the owners and service manuals with schematics and diagrams. One guy in Erie, PA was able to fix one of the issues, but gave up on the rest. I even had my 91 year old dad take a crack at it.

Here's the deal. I have always had CB radio in my mobiles, but the last time I had an actual base station was when I was a teenager. Since setting up a base station here a few years ago, I wanted a base radio that plugs in the wall instead of a mobile hooked to a power supply. Problem is there is only one base station made today and it's expensive. Any older base station you are gonna buy is going to be 20+ years old and will have issues. I learned this the hard way after several bad buys.

I decided to take a different route.............

[Wallythacker]

That's a cool approach! Combine the best of the old with the new. Most CB were actually made pretty darn good. There were cut rate rigs but the branded stuff was good.

Most of the problems can be solved with a refresh of all the electrolytic caps. They will be dried out or leaking at their age. One rainy afternoon with a soldering iron and you have a "factory fresh" radio. Give it a quick alignment and it's probably better than new. Other than the mechanical switches breaking nothing really dies in discrete solid state stuff.

I like both mediums. Ham and CB. Some of my longest and best friends have come from both sides. I agree that there are too many Elmer Fudd type hams willing to skewer another ham for no reason. I won't those jerks the time of day. I sometimes hope I hear them calling on 80m for help and I can claim, too much qrm, I couldn't copy and drive on.

I keep looking for my Holy Grail, a basement or attic find of a TRC-457 from Radio Shack. They want $500 on Ebay. Mind , it did sell for $500 back in the day so it's funny to see after all these years it kept its value. I sold mine for $35 in 2002 or so. Yikes.