OK Now I got a radio, where to go?

Let me confess a bias, I was a Sailor (Brown Water, deck ape and Gunner's Mate) and a Merchie Wiper/Ordinary Seaman and did a little recreational blue water sailing back in the day and have certain romantic notions of maritime radio. With this 14.300Mhz (http://14300.net/ )and the Intercon, Maritime, Pacific and USCG nets hold quite an attraction. Most of the time its like most nets with check ins and signal reports but it gets interesting at times following single handers, world cruisers and the occasional traffic of vessels in difficulty. The other advantage is that it is international in nature and openings are often evident at this "Watering Hole." However, its not a place to start a QSO but can tell you what may be open. 73 Rob

The End Fed Tuner

Tuners are pricey, The cheapest in the catalogs is in the 70 dollar range. I'm no antenna guru but the endfed tuner promoted by Steve, http://www.aa5tb.com/ , is easy to make and cheap, mine all came from a junkbox and the toroid could be done as an airwound coil if one were not available, the T 50-2 was robust enough for my MFJ 9420 and 33 feet of a $5.00 2oo foot spool was rigged as a horizonal, sloper and an inverted V and has worked from the Ukrane to Japan to South America. Another advantage is the need for only a .05WL counterpoise-a real plus in a second floor shack.

OK What is this blogging thing?

This is an Old Farts first attempt at blogging, it is about low rent amateur (Ham) radio with a cut an try, non-digital focus. I add QRP to my call when I CQ but I'm really a Piss Weaker with a low tech MFJ radio and an end fed half-wave antenna with a AA5TB type tuner home-brewed out of a broken SWR meter and variable cap out of an old table radio (the MFJs are durn near robust as tube gear-no SWR meter-just tune for the loudest noise on receive and have at it. Output is about 8 W). I was a terminal no-code tech for years (KB8TEJ) and never got the minimalist cw qrp bug, quit for a few years then upgraded when the code requirement was removed-but still use cw as a pileup breaker on six meters.



The QTH is not the best, a river valley with mountains on all sides so high angle radiation is a must so the cheap antenna is a virtue made of necessity. As a tech six was the working band and the QTH was a farm on a ridge and wire antennas (longwires and half squares fed by CATV coax were the norm and I got across the pond and into South America with 10W.

I currently use twenty meters and ride along with the 14.300 nets and the YLNET while looking for DX openings. I don't chase paper but QSL when received.

I hope to be able to share some of the low rent tricks I have learned and to learn some from others. 73 de Rob

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