This is too late to help, but I'll say it in hopes that it might help someone else.  I put my MFJ-927 autotuner in a spot I thought was protected from the weather, but I was wrong about that.  It was fairly full of rainwater when it finally stopped working.

I took off the cover and dried it for a couple of days, then tried the "reset" process.  It failed, several times in a row.  I went through all the diagnostics and resets in the manual, and it wasn't working.  Ordinarily, I would have given up on it after a half-dozen tries, but I had nothing better to be doing, so I kept doing resets.  After maybe a dozen "system resets," the thing suddenly started working right.  :-)  It's been back up for a few months now and works perfectly well now. 

So, short version:  trying LOTS of "system reset" procedures isn't going to hurt, and it might just help.  FWIW.  73!  --ken

I've played with a lot of wire antennas over the years, but they've all been either loops or doublets.  I've never experimented with a random wire, end-fed.  But I noticed recently that I've got a place in the yard where I could run about 150-160 feet of wire in a straight line, almost exactly due west, slanting from around 40 feet at one end to working desk height at the feedpoint. I'm thinking about putting that up in the air this week for my back-yard-QRP playing, now that the weather is turning warm.

If I remember, I could expect a bit of gain on 10-12-15 meters, pretty much due west, with an antenna like that--is that correct?  Is there an online resource for plotting the patterns?  Thanks!

Did you get a picture taken with Alan?  Post it!

    That is the quote of the year, 'RUL!   Absolute truth, and funny besides!

And K5UNX, as others have said, there are differences between the different bands, and the differences are different at different times of day and differrent seasons of the year and different solar conditions and at different locations.  THAT's why KG4RUL made the "Understanding (it) will take the rest of your life" comment.  There are huge numbers of variables.  But the good part is, experimenting and finding how the differences is flat-out FUN!   So enjoy getting to know the bands! 

Right--Canadian hams are almost always a real pleasure to work.

There's a great tourism motto for Canada:  "Canada: we're a lot like you, but nicer."   

John, you're sure right about that.  Same thing with those reviews that start "everything i hear about the Yaewood TG-4440 meens it is the transcever of the year and if i ever get a radeo other than my HT tha'tll be the radeo i buy!"

But once again, YOU made a judgement about how much weight to give to those "reviews," based on your own understanding of the reviewers' ability to provide a useful and objective summary.  And I do the same thing, as I read them.  And you and I might well have DIFFERENT estimates of how much weight to give to each individual review.  But we can make those decisions for ourselves, don't you think?  No need to try to make the moderators decide FOR us, right? 

73!   Ken

I'm not a real contester, but I enjoy playing every now and then--pick up a few band/mode fills, even an all-time new one occasionally.  I had never heard of the "MM" contest until this morning, when I heard people working it, but I looked up the rules on the web, and I've had a lot of fun with it today on 15m CW, picking up a few contacts here and there when I had some spare time during the day.  "MM" seems a bit more easygoing than some HF contests.

The PODXS 070 club's contests are usually bundles of fun, too, though I don't do much PSK these days.

I think this past January is the first time I worked the "RTTY Roundup"--that was a HOOT!

I won't ever be a serious contester, probably, but they sure can be a lot of fun even for casual participants like me.  Plus they are a nice way to work on your CW skills, for us casual part-time hams.  :-)  

I was looking forward to trying the North Carolina QSO Party this year, but they didn't allow RTTY and that is what I felt like playing with that weekend, so I didn't work it at all.  Maybe next year!

I think a lot of hams may not know how much FUN you can have playing in a contest, even if you're not seriously contesting.  :-)

The first piece of new (not used) ham equipment I bought, back in 1991 when I was first licensed, was a MFJ tuner.  That tuner still works perfectly well.  I've bought auto-tuners, keyers, paddles, car antenna mounts, and a BUNCH of other MFJ stuff over the years.  I've never had to send anything back to them.  A couple of small issues that were easily fixed, but no returns or major problems.  The prices are good, and I *like* the idea of supporting an American manufacturer.  Call me an MFJ fan!

Yeah, but the OP has a whole working PC for $6.  And he's keeping that PC out of the landfill by using it.   He's saved a bunch of money and done something "green" at the same time.

You're welcome to your opinion.  But a WHOLE bunch of us would disagree.

BTW, KJ6AMF has a good point about linux; you can also get older versions of most distributions, that will run on older hardware.  Linux is FREE, and it's better than Windows in a lot of ways, besides.  :-)   It's a win-win IMO! 

I can see why you'd be less than pleased with a review like that.  But my guess is that the moderators have all they can handle even WITHOUT having to decide who is competent to review what piece of gear.  And even if the moderators DID decide they could read all the reviews and delete any they don't feel are worth propagating, then you'd have people angry that their reviews were deleted, and probably eager to discuss that with the moderators.

I think the best way to grade the reviews is for each of us to decide how much weight to give to any particular review, the way we've been doing since before the web

FLDIGI does RTTY just fine!  And it ought to run on that old box.  And CONGRATULATIONS to the original poster for recycling electronics in the best possible way--keeping it out of the landfill by USING it!   And thanks to VA7CPC for being rational about it instead of picking at the OP.   I've got several old PCs that still work just fine for the various applications I've got them on, and you may safely ignore the naysayers!

Wow--your first mobile CW QSO, and the young fella's first-ever CW QSO!  I'm guessing there were big grins on both ends of the contact!

I've got two cheap Casio watches, they were around $20 each--one in the car for mobile HF and one in my shack.  They set themselves to WWVH (always accurate), they're solar-powered (no batteries), and the "dual zone" feature lets me leave them set to GMT.   The only downside is that they're small (harder for old eyes to read at times).  These  suit my needs really well, FWIW.

Daz, sorry if I flamed your panties.  What your post looked like to many of us was blatant advertising, in an inappropriate forum, of a type usually coming from a shill for the manufacturer.  This is something most of us Old Pharts dislike rather intensely.

I'd also be willing to bet you could make at least as good antenna for 25% of the price you paid for a store-bought antenna, but that's an entirely different argument, and you've suffered enough for now. ;-)

Apologies are offered to the extent that they are necessary, and welcome.  73!  --ken

John, what I do is tune in on someone I'm going to call.  I set FLDIGI to CW mode, and that puts a marker at 700Hz on the waterfall--700Hz is a standard offset for CW, though most rigs will let you make the offset anything you like.  So I tune so my target station is right exactly on the 700Hz mark on the waterfall, and since my rig is also set for 700Hz offset, I'm pretty close to being zero-beated!  (Zero beaten?) 

By the way, M0LEP is absolutely right; different people learn by different methods.  I promise you this, though:  Once you can recognize all the characters, and start making a few on-air QSOs using code, your skill at it will SKYROCKET.   Just MHO but there's no practice/learning method even close to actually using code on the air--and it's FUN, besides!  :-)   GL 73!  --ken