When I was dealing with HRO and shipping stuff out of the USA HRO was just the best to deal with. There was a lady there named Janet she was very good at her job.
I would not have bothered  dealing with HRO if it was not for Janet. Anyway if you ordering from HRO just ask for Janet, she makes things happen in a professional  manner.

Yup,  resistance against SMT parts are just from hams who are too lazy to build anything. You hear this excuse all the time "them thar  there parts are too small for my eyes" Its just a rubbish excuse really. Why I know this?
When the K2 first came out these same hams at the club were complaining about SMT. I brought in my first K2 showed them the kit and construction. All the super hams chickened out of the club buy of the K2 project.
If you dont want to build ham gear just say you dont want to do it rather than making up BS excuses about the part sizes. SMT is easy

You can also get one of the PC USB microscopes and use  them as your eyes.  In pinch I even use the camera on my smartphone if i cant see something.

I am old and have shaky hands and I find SMT much easier than through hole parts and kits. I can assemble a board much faster than a through hole kit. Once you have the right tools and magnifying headset
you fly through the assembly.

If you do decide to get into SMT get yourself the best possible SMT tweezer set with parts holder. Just avoid the rubbish from China.

I also  have mastered the technique  of removing SMT parts. I just use a bog blob of solder at the end of the iron and move the part around. WHen the part moves I just flick it off with the iron tip. Its lot safer
than the cutting the part technique which can left those fine PCB traces. 60/40 lead solder works best for this. Some of the none lead solder does not "blob" up as well as the 60/40

Another good trick to make SMT assembly fly is this. Get yourself a flux pen and flux up the pads before soldering on the parts. Its amazing how better the solder flows once you have fluxed the pad.

PCB layout for SMT is also much easier for SMT parts than through hole.

KK7B,  R2 DC receiver. Its amazing! I think kits are still available from a company called Kangaroo or something like that

Just build a Single 3-500 amplifier. This tube makes the best beginners amplifier. You can leave the space in the box for another 3-500, but thats not necessary most of the time.
You can use all the supported parts from Harbach for the SB220 and Drake L4B. All the modules are build and ready to go. You can also buy many of the parts from Ameritron for the AL80 amp.
Its also easy to find  spare SB220 transformer on Ebay.
If you contact Lou from King 6 meter conversion, he might have many of the parts for sale from a gutted 6 meter converted SB220.

Why I like the 3-500 is that its instant on. 3 minutes can be an eternity when you trying to work the DX.  This makes you less like want to have a solid state amplifier.
I have got all sorts of homebrew amplifers with every tube imaginable and my most used amp has 3-500's in it

Florida  is one of the best locations in the USA to put a station. When I traveled around on DX'peditions  in Africa and the Pacific, I could always hear stations in Florida when there were
no other stations on the band. Theres also a lot of retired hams down in Florida so you hear them  on the air at all sorts of odd hours when the rest of the USA is sleeping.

If Ham A is  right on the salt water or in a salt swamp he is going to keep up with the 100 ft tower and probably hear and work DX that nobody else is going  hear.
That thing called the brewster angle is what does it if you near saltwater and its  worth having. The real problem is that anything near saltwater is expensive in Florida. Then you have all
that noise from all those apartments and the vertical would be the worst antenna to have.  If you cant hear them you cant work em!

Then the next problem is that unless the ham is on a small saltwater island his signal  will only be good beaming over seawater.

If the Ham in FL is stuck way back from the coast and over poor ground conductivity the vertical is going to be owned by the 100ft tower.

I would take the 100ft tower because you can put together a nice single tower station using either Optibeams, Ultrabeams or Steppirs. For that matter a hexbeam up 100 ft would beat most stations in the city with lower beams

I used to work a station on the Westcoast in Suncity. I think he is a silent key now. He was in a retirement community. He had 3 Butternut vertical  that installed as a phased vertical array. He had 60 radials on each antenna.
He had an impressive signal on all bands from 40 through to 10 meters. Where he was the ground conductivity was not very good. His main competition on 40 meters was using the cushcraft 2 element beams. If I blind folded
you and you just listened you could not tell who was using the beam or the butternut phase verticals.  His phase verticals worked very well. He used a variable phasing system that was published in one of the ARRL compendium books.
So verticals installed properly can be competitive, just avoid using these no ground all band rubbish verticals.

Its like shoes, you need to try them on! Same goes for keys, feel is a personal thing.

One of the best CW operators that I know has been using 2 X J38s strapped as a paddle, this ham is HS club member and he has used the same pair of J38's for at least  40 years. No Begali or Vibroplexers in sight!

Skimmer is incredible. Skimmer while it decodes CW it would not be the best for daily use since the decode is only on 1 line. I just notice when I use Skimmer that it seems to do a half reasonable job.
I dont know if CW Skimmer can use a larger window like CWGET. The thing that I find is that it does not really matter if the accuracy is 100%, if you can see 4 or 5 lines including garbage on the screen
you can work out what is being said if you like using a decoder. Anything with a small display cant give this ESP ability.

The CW decoder on the K3 is very temperamental and  because of the limited screen size you cant see the general QSO details because it scrolls into nowhere.
At our club they have beginners station and it has the K1El K42  decoder/keyboard. The only thing that annoys me  about it is that it uses a fixed pitch something like 600HZ.
I think its the best LCD decoder that I have come across in terms of accuracy.

I dont  need to use them but i like seeing  what the potential of the technology is. I think the program with the most potential would be skimmer if it was turned into  general
CW  QSO package rather than a skimmer  semi only application.

I think noise is the worst enemy of these decoders and like DSP noise reduction on HF, unless we go digital CW decoding will always be a hit and miss affair, thats why its best using your head.

You might email the author of CW SKIMMER and see if a general decoder package is available. Skimmer in a contest is scary the way it decodes so many callsigns.

My best straight key is the HiMound  HK702. The one with the big white marble base. This Key is just as good as the  Amplidan and Marconi Straight keys.
The himound is as smooth as butter. The best feature about it is when you adjust  the settings stay put even in temperature extremes. I like very close spacing  on my straight keys which I like for
high speed  straight keying. Many keys if you set the contact spacing too close and it heats up a bit  the contact expand and start keying the radios. I always had to unplug other straight keys for this reason.
Since I never turn my radios off, I always had this problem until I got the Himound.

Look for an antenna design by G3LDO called a Skeleton Slot antenna. Theres details in the RSGB handbook and the some ARRL antenna compendiums.
 It covers 20 through to 10 meters and is fed with 450OHM ladder line. It will tune 7mhz through to 30mhz. Its one of the most effective basic wire antennas that I have used for DX work.
You can mount it up on a push up fiberglass or TV mast. If you interested in working DX this is the antenna to go for.

Another good antenna is the Cob Web antenna. The homebrew version using normal wire will  also work well if you can get it up on a 30ft pole. You can mount this on a TV pushup mast to
at least 40 feet.

After these two antenna the hexbeam!

All interesting information guys. It would still be useful as a general purpose bandscope for older radios. For the price it just show the potential of the design. The Funcube dongle
is another ground breaking product.

Who knows someone might package the device as a PSK IMD monitor along with a Android or Iphone app. It certainly has potential

Flexradio would have a "game changer" if they put a front panel on their new radio. Hams are not Luddites who hate new technology, its just that knobs and front panels are etched into every hams DNA.
Those who ignore this  reality will be limited to a niche market limited to hams who like being trendy. Hams on the other hand who generally buy 1 radio that lasts them for at least a  decade, will be looking fox a box
with a front panel and knobs.  The Flexradio could have easily match the new TS-990S if it had a front panel. Flex could have even used a touch screen PC to pull this off.

It would be nice if the FCC including transmitter IMD certification. All these labs already certify commercial HF SSB radios, they know how to do it. Ham transceivers should
adopt the same minimum IMD standards like the commercial marine radios.

The most disapointing thing  about the new Flexradio is the horrible cheap PA in the radio. For the price that they asking they could have included a decent high voltage FET  PA. It would have been
easy to include a DC DC converter that stepped up 13.8 volts to the require 50 to 100 volts for a low IMD FET PA. Totally disappointing really. The new Kenwoos TS990S looks like it will 3rd order IMD figure in the range
of -40db  3rd  order, for non class A radio thats impressive. Just a shame the new Kenwood has no IF output and a lousy uncalibrated S-meter.

The TS450S was infamous for having the dry joint problems. I hand soldered my TS450S when I had it. If it just stopped suddenly thats probably what it is.
Kenwood technicians are well aware of this problem, the infamous Kenwood bad solder problem.

Why bother? I doubt that anyone would prosecute you for running 15 watts  instead of 10 watts. How are you measuring the power? If you using the average ham meter or even a  bird, you would be lucky if you got 15% accuracy. It could even be worst if you reading power while connected to the antenna. Another point  is that the efficiency of the  amplifier in the radio will vary from band to band. You will probably find that the power is lower on 10 meters.

The best way to be sure is use  what ever wattmeter you have and feed it into a dummy load. Adjust your power to the lowest level that you can using carrier power. Connect an oscilloscope across the dummy load. Make  the adjustments on the scope so that you can read the level  easily. Then switch over to SSB and just use your mic gain   so that when you drive the radio its below the carrier point. If you oscilloscope has enough bandwidth you can measure power more accurately than the average  ham wattmeter. Its the best peak power reading device you can have in the ham shack.  If the radio inspector came and visited you  he would probably leave you alone because he would see that you have an oscilloscope and you are doing your best  to measure peak power accurately. It would also indicate that you technically minded and know what you doing. Besides the oscilloscope is a handy thing for modulation  monitoring to prevent over driving.

Another problem with TS430S is that if you  bought it secondhand and dont know the history of the radio, you will probably find some idiot has tried to adjust the radio for more power output. The TS430S
is one of these radios that can splatter pretty badly if some incompetent  fool has had his screwdriver inside  trying to get more power out of the radio. If you unsure it might be wise to get a real technician to tune the radio for you.
A proper technician could easily adjust the drive level internally to give you 10 watts exactly, its pretty easy to do.

I work a lot of you F calls on 15 meters. Most of these stations are not running 10 watts I know that I think there are many that are running as  much 1kw or more. Because we have all been hams for decades we just know what is possible.  Besides the largest number  of hams  in the world that ran 10 watts were the Japanese hams. I have worked them for more than 30 years, we all know what is possible and what is impossible! Nobody else in the world can  run a G5RV or even a triband beam with 10 watts and be 5/9plus. So if these stations are doing it and getting away with it they not  going to be concerned about your miserable 5 watts extra.

I must saying imposing a power level as low as 10 watts is ridiculous. They should have made the legal limit 25 watts. This would have been 6db down from 100 watts.  25 watts is enough power for beginners to work the world on any
band if you run a decent antenna. If you cant do it on 25  watts you need better antennas.

 I also notice that  a lot  your new F calls run this bassy ESSB audio, which is the worst TX audio you can run for working DX. I reallystruggle hearing this rubbish crap bassy audio from weak stations.  If you reduce the bandwidth of your SSB bandwidth you can increase the signal to noise ratio by as much as 10db. I find it astonishing that they let hams who  are supposed to be learning the fundamentals of radio, and yet they allow these hams
to run wide  ESSB which is hardly appropriate for a low power SSB station.

According to the OECD you the most over governed and most inefficient country in the world. Why do you have so many layers of government for such a small population?
When you have massive government system with 3 layers of  government the parasites need your tax dollars.

I was astonished to read how the system works in Australia. Everything seems to be duplicated. For example you have a Federal health dept and then for every state you have another health department. This
is the most ridiculous system of government that I have ever come across. I thought the old soviet communist system was  the most bureaucratic, however I think Australia is close second.

One would think that if you pay a ham license fee you should have the right to put up a tower, being officially licensed. When I visited  Australia I was in the outback. Hams there were telling me that they could not put up a mast higher
than 10 meters stuck in the middle of nowhere.How did such a system of insanity prevail? Last I checked Australia had the lowest population density on the planet like 2 or 3 people for every square kilometer  of land. With such a low
population density really anyone should have the right to put up at least 70 to 100ft tower. I even visited one ham who was living on 40 acres and they still restricted his right to put up a miserable wet noodle 60ft pole. Totally bizarre.
But this is what you get when you have more politicians per head  than any other country in the world.

I visited Japan which has the highest population density in the world. Yet when I traveled around I saw more 70ft to 100ft ham towers than any country in the world. I went to hams house which we would call an apartment. He had  40 and 20 meter monobanders up on a 120 ft tower with 100's of these tiny houses around him. He was not the odd guy out. When I visited a radio club just about every ham  had a 70ft tower. Now I know why every pile from JA every one has  a big signal. All I hear from VK is squeaky weak G5RV's that are no more than 10 meters high.

Oh well thats your country, my advice is to vote for the first party that gets rid of so many layers of government, bureaucrat departments and the all the  lousy politicians. Even In place like Europe its easier putting up a tower than Australia.
As the saying goes you get the government that you deserve!

 FU-728F POWER TETRODE
Cathode:  Oxide-coated unipotential
Heater:  8.5-9A @ 9V
Cathode warm up time:  3 min (Min)
Inter-electrode Capacitances:  (grounded cathode connection):
Input:  103 pF
Output:  13.3 pF
Feedback:  0.03 pF
Transconductance:  >= 14.3 mA/V
Maximum operating temperature:
Ceramic/metal seals: 250°C
Anode core: 250°C
Cooling：Forced air
Air-flow requirements:  3000 l/min
Net weight:  950g
Class AB1 radio frequency SSB linear amplifier (below 110MHz):
 Ua = 3000v
Ug2 = 350V
 Ug1 = -79V (zero-signal plate current Ia = 250mA)
Plate dissipation:  1200 W
Pg2 dissipation: 12W,
Pg1 dissipation: 0W
Ia = 0.9A
Output power:
Single-tone: 1800W
Two-tone: 2500W

I have a dimension sheet somewhere. As you can see its not a 1500 watt dissipation tube.