My Google search turned up a number of people selling manuals for the Gonset 3357 VFO, the contents of which were described as follows:

"Communicator VFO model 3357.  Included is alignment, installation and operation, instructions for the Communicator IV, GC-105, communicator III, Communicator II and Communicator I, FM operation, parts list and schematic." (Emphasis added.)

This suggests to me that this VFO had an FM modulator.  You can pick up a copy of the manual for $10 or so; here's one place that sells it:

http://www.radioreprints.com/descriptions/gonset_vfo.php?PHPSESSID=2e23d30bd8a2cae589fd210862c75953

Here's a YouTube video of someone using slope tuning to receive FM on an unmodified Gonset Communicator II:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5AYAYplERs

But it's always been this way.  Keep in mind that, at any time in our hobby's history, no more than roughly one in four hundred Americans have been hams (at the moment, it's around one in 438).  It's inevitable that if you take a random sample of people, many of them will have little or no idea of what ham radio is.


Again, most kids never did.

Doing it the right way is legal; doing it the wrong way is sketchy at best, illegal at worst. 

And doing it the right way  is easy.  How much motivation does a person need to wire up a cable?

Putting a clean PSK31 audio signal through a properly-adjusted SSB rig produces a signal that's all-but indistinguishable from "pure" PSK31, in either the time or frequency domain, just as putting a CW audio signal through such a rig produces a signal that's indistinguishable from a CW signal produced by keying a carrier on and off.  (If the carrier weren't properly nulled out, you'd see a difference, but any halfway decent rig will be fine on that score.)  So if you want to call it SSB, go ahead, but it's not the 2.5kHz-wide SSB that you get when transmitting voice.  If you use the air interface, it potentially is 2.5kHz wide.


It's not a nit-pick; the air interface is a bad way to transmit PSK31, for the reasons stated here and in a half-dozen other threads.  Even hooking up a straight-through audio cable between the sound card output and the rig's transmit audio input is better, and costs next to nothing.  A transformer-isolated interface costs just a bit more.  Why the resistance to avoiding something that's patently bad, when doing it the right way is so inexpensive?

If you're transmitting PSK31 and picking up background shack noises with an air interface, you're transmitting SSB in a portion of the band where it's not permitted (as AA4PB already pointed out).  Not to mention that you're potentially interfering with other nearby PSK31 signals.

The air interface seems to come up every few weeks in this forum.  Bottom line: use it for receiving, if you want, but it's bad practice to use it for transmitting.

It depends: did the Mayans predict that you'll let your license expire?

W3HF maintains a large collection of old callbooks.  You can contact him through his site:

http://www.w3hf.com/

He's also a frequent eham.net poster.

Yes, exactly.

When you're asking a question, you are first and foremost telling a story about something that you've seen, or that's happened to you.  I can't count the times that I've seen a poster describe a situation and omit most of the pertinent details, then ask what to do about it.  If my first thought is, "About what?" I move on to the next post.

You don't need to buy a copy of XP.  Microsoft makes available to Windows 7 users a free copy of XP Mode that you can run with Virtual PC:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx

Just about any Windows machine can play that format, provided you download and install RealPlayer.  But anyone who's used RealPlayer is loathe to do that, myself included.

Not that I'm admitting to being an old fart or anything, but here it is:

http://pl703.pairlitesite.com/Hallicrafters.html

Here are some guesses (not hard data) based on observations from over 60 VE sessions.

1) The vast majority of candidates pass the element they studied for.  I'd say that, at most, one person in a dozen fails to pass the exam they came to take, across all classes.  I haven't noticed a marked difference among Technician, General, and Extra applicants in this regard.  In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the pass rates for General and Extra are higher, because the candidates are less likely to be taking the exam on a whim.

2) Virtually all candidates who pass an element and take the next one will fail if they haven't studied for it.  Notable exceptions are EEs and others with a significant electronics background.  (The high fail rate makes me skeptical about the alleged benefits of taking such a test to, as people often put it, "see what it's like," but that's another discussion.)

3) If Technician candidates fail their first attempt by one or two questions, they have a slightly better than even chance of passing a re-test.

I'm not sure, but Principal Skinner is WA3QIZ:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fo-W1wDXHA

No, not really.  As a long-time ham, I enjoy reading N2EY's descriptions of how tests were given before I was licensed.  But few things are as uninteresting or off-putting to a new or aspiring ham as hearing about how things were back in the day, when you had to answer essay questions and walk 30 miles in the snow to get to an exam.  At VE sessions we occasionally get someone who's disgruntled at having to wait a week for their new license to appear in the FCC database, and I launch into a speech about how we had to wait 6 weeks to get our Novice license in the mail.  Then I realize that I sound like Grandpa Simpson, and I shut up.   

Twenty-six, actually.  At VE sessions, I've heard this score referred to as "passing with efficiency."