Ever work as a bagger in a grocery store? Remember the old lady who wanted all her groceries in one bag but she didn't want it to be heavy? All designs have some kind of compromise. And the ones with the most "features" or "versatility" could end up being the crappiest in terms of usability and stability.

The design tradeoffs in that QST article are the same ones made in e.g. Heath HG-10B and many other general-purpose VFO's of the era. Most used string-dial drives to get a fast but not ridiculously fast tuning rate, while covering most of 80M+75M, and many reduced the fundamental range for the higher bands just as you suggest.

Today there's no reason to try to "emulate a store bought VFO" including its design tradeoffs. Covering just a sub-section of the CW band is perfectly reasonable.

Doubling in the VFO is in fact a very good idea. If you want an 80M VFO, you might start with 1.75Mc as your base VFO frequency and at least double before going into the transmitter.

Used HG-10B's and similar are out there and you might pick one up and give it a try if you've never used one. Yes, even with string-dial drive, the tuning rate will seem ridiculously fast even on the low bands but you'll get used to the rate and mechanical slop in the tuning mechanism and work it to better than a few hundred Hz. Remember 50 years ago, folks would call CQ and "listen up" or "listen down" many kc for callers, because the modern day expectation of zero-beating to the nearest Hz was simply ridiculous, and even having a VFO was a luxury not everyone (and no novices) had.

Before I had to leave for work this AM, A25RJ Botswana (there for the next few days) was on 15M mostly working JA's. While he probably had the beam pointed away from me, he was clear as day at my QTH in MD. Not an ATNO for me but would be nice to get some bandfills, I saw he has been on 12M too where I do need him.

Wondering out loud if I was hearing him off the back of his beam, or if his beam was going 3/4 of the way around the world to reach me :-)

15M over the weekend in the All-Asian CW, was remarkable here on the East Coast of US. JA's, BA's, BY's, 9V, HS, HL, 9M2, all coming in just wonderfully, pretty much around the clock, and very few had any over-the-pole fuzz/flutter.

I'm kinda surprised because a week ago there were basically no sunspots. Local experts tell me the low A index is what really is key to these prime conditions in our summertime.

Two campers come upon an angry bear. The first says, "I'm glad I wore my running shoes." The second says, "you can't outrun the bear." The first says, "I don't have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you."

In a pile-up, it's not just enough to be loud enough to be heard by the DX, but you have to be heard over the other callers.

I really do not have much patience for pile-ups lately. I hear others moan about calling for days without reply... most often my threshold is minutes! That doesn't mean that I don't work the DXpedition, that just means that I wait till the end of the trip.

Really, if you mess up a circuit board, you can probably do an impromptu repair (e.g. use a wire bridge instead of PC board track.) It might not look pretty but it's a skill worth learning. And with some practice, it can be done to look pretty. There's nothing awfully high-tech or incredibly high density in the 1320.

The thought of unsoldering dozens to hundreds of parts from the "bad" PCB to transfer to a "new" PCB? That is ridiculous. Would never be done in the real world. Don't go there. If you had trouble soldering to the original PCB to the extent that you damaged the PCB, you would certainly damage many many parts in their removal from the damaged PCB. Desoldering without component damage, is possible with skill, but requires substantially more skill and incredibly more time than stuffing and soldering a PCB.

Tim.

If you make an .ADI of your QSO's marking the ones that you have confirmed by LOTW and the ones you have confirmed by paper card QSL's... you can use this in many places. Most convenient for me (online) is to import to "clublog.org". This has proved very valuable to me as I track worked vs worked and confirmed in LOTW vs worked and confirmed on paper.

Of course DXKeeper is also supposed to be able to track award progress as well, but I find I much prefer clublog.

And SX5KL just uploaded to LOTW, wowza! Not an ATNO for me but got many much-needed bandfills! Thanks to SX5KL and SV2FWV!!!

For those who missed out on SX5KL - give a try during this summer's IOTA contest. Dodecanese  seems to be pretty reliably activated for that.

I think the ARRL is rather self-consistent on this since 1991. Baldur's operation was approved by the Patriarechate in Istanbul, but not by the Mt Athos Holy Council, stirring up the hornet's nest and requiring a fine red line. The interpretation since Baldur's visit seems to me, most consistent with "separate administration" grandfathering, that as far as ARRL is concerned, the separate administration exists and is exclusively the territory of the Mt Athos Holy Council.

See, this is the sore point. The government agencies and contractors/employees (outside FCC which unfortunately doesn't do much anymore) that do the monitoring, cannot tell us that they are monitoring without breaking the law and/or violating the super-secret court orders. Government officials sometimes have to lie (or at least not reveal) to congress, because if they revealed anything they would be violating the super-secret court orders. What a tangled web. e.g. Clapper is in a true Catch-22.

Ham communications has always been available for monitoring by any/all governments - a very explicit agreement between amateurs and government, with broad restrictions/shutdowns in wartime. Also self-monitored by amateur societies as well (e.g. "OO postcards"). And, well, pretty much anybody with a radio.

Some of us would like it, if FCC did more pro-active monitoring and enforcement, rather than less. ARRL certainly plugs their spectrum defense fund, to fill in many places where the FCC is not stepping up to the plate on their own.

I tried to do a little research on DXCC reasoning for Mt Athos. Didn't really find much other than it was put in DXCC list in 1973. My only thought, is that Vatican City seems somewhat similar, probably both fit under the old "separate administration" clause.

Prior to Baldur's visit, it seems ARRL was open to granting visitors with minimal paperwork (Greek ham license or CEPT agreement) accreditation for Mt Athos DXCC operations. Since Baldur's visit in 1991, the bar is much higher and the Mt Athos Holy Council is required to have granted permission (Reference: N4AL/SV0JB in Dec 2003 QST "How's DX").

You tuned up the antenna tuner, with the AL-84 in STBY, right? Then you went to OPR to tune the amp, right?

I think you're talking about the "blocking capacitor" between tube anodes and the pi network. In a typical 100W SSB transceiver with sweep tubes (cough cough) or 6146's, this would be 0.0047 or 0.005uF at 1.6kV or better.

Some rigs of that era used a Mica capacitor in that position. But a modern low-loss high-current HV disc capacitor (as commonly used in modern switching power supplies, I betcha that's what you got) should be just as good if not better than the micas used in the 50's or 60's.

It would be cool if we could add some common-sense propagation knowledge to spotting filters.

e.g. when VK, T32, and I am all in common darkness, I'm 100% sure I would work a T32 (slam dunk easy) spotted by VK on 30/40/80M.

In the summer I would stand a good chance when we are all on sunlight on the high bands. (But not so slam dunk because they would probably be using a directional antenna pointed wrong way).

I have sometimes been surprised what I've also been able to work despite common sense. Especially low bands, especially grey line can linger on for suprisingly long after sunrise. So too much filtering is bad too. I'm always willing to give a listen even if I may not get through. I was surprised to hear China pretty well this morning on 30M several hours after sunrise - no other east coast stations were spotting China, but there were many east coast callers who were succesful. The spots were coming from JA.

Tim.

Prominent UA2 LOTW QSL'ers for me in past few years: UA2CZ, UA2FR, and UA2FX (the last on 160M! Woo-hoo!)

I don't know what 6 meter usage is like on West coast, but here on East coast, 50.130 to 50.200 will be SSB. (Not that I'm the world expert on voice modes. I'm doing this test all CW!)

Tim.