These dishes are in very common use by the microwave crowd.  I have one I picked up for $10 that I use on 10 GHz weak-signal modes.  Very nice dish; the offset feed dishes are preferable because the feed is out of the way of the visible area of the dish.

If you have the feedhorn that comes with it, it's a relatively simple matter to place the feed for your band of choice at that location.

See the W1GHZ On-Line Antenna Book for more info:

http://www.w1ghz.org/antbook/contents.htm

73, Zack W9SZ

The rare contester or DXer in the USA will either accidentally or intentionally call a DX station on SSB out of the band on 40m during a contest.  I did this myself one year in CQWW - it was about 3 AM on Sunday morning, I'd only had a couple hours sleep since the contest started Friday evening and I called a station on about 7050 by accident. I got no answer (he was listening up in the US segment) and there was evidently no one else around to tell me "Wrong VFO". I figured it out myself pretty quickly, tuned to his listening frequency above 7150 and worked him.

There are a very very few bad eggs who think they are OK to call DX on 40m from the USA below 7150 kHz. I don't know what to say about them.

Regular DX SSB (except for USA and a few other places) takes place down to 7050 and I have heard it go as low as 7020 in contests. Most of these listen up in the USA phone segment or in some cases on both frequencies (USA phone and their own transmitting frequency) if they want to work USA stations.

You may have heard a DX station WORKING USA stations and giving their calls.  He was probably listening up above 7150.

73, Zack W9SZ

I got an HTX-100 back around 1989 and strung a 10 meter dipole up in my attic. It was oriented E-W (radiation most likely N-S but possibly altered by attic wiring) and I worked much DX over the next few years with it.  This was near the peak of that sunspot cycle. It wasn't the "optimum antenna" for 10 meters but it did work. It sure got into Russia very well!

The groundplane vertical should also work well.  I used a 102 inch whip shortened for 10 meters on my car and also worked DX with it mobile during this same time period.

Right now the HTX-100 is being used primarily as an IF rig for 50-432 MHz. But I might run it mobile on 28 MHz again when the sunspots peak in a few years.

Whatever you do, have fun!  There are often sporadic-E openings that open up 10 meters during these bleak years of low sunspot activity. Keep listening around and work whoever you can.

73, Zack W9SZ

Mouser and Digi-Key are the two main places I've been buying parts for 15-20 years.  They have always had superb service.  

I recently ordered some parts from Digi-Key and they shipped one incorrect part (worth a total of $6.00).  I called them about it and they immediately shipped the correct part at no extra charge to me and told me to keep the other incorrect part. I know for a $6 part it's not worth their time to bother, but I was impressed with the service.  That's why they get my business.

When I was at Dayton in 2006, I saw a Delorean parked in the flea market area.  He had it modified to add a flux capacitor that looked just like the one in "Back To The Future".  Pretty cool!

Ah, the dreaded PLL unlock!

The problem, as was mentioned briefly already, is that Kenwood used a contact cement on the VCO board to hold certain components down.  The contact cement, after years of heating/cooling, etc., discolors and absorbs moisture.  It then detunes the circuits it has been used to coat.

I removed every part on my TS-440 VCO board that was coated with this stuff and cleaned it off.  It took me about a week in my "spare time" and I broke a couple of the components while trying to get them out.  Fortunately, replacement parts were easy to come by.

But the result was that my TS-440 has not once given me problems after the repair/realignment.

This problem BTW was also infamous in a line of RCA VCR's.  They put the same glue on a DC-DC converter circuit.  Someone even made a kit of the parts most likely needing replacement in that VCR.

If you go the route of repairing it yourself, be very careful with the glass diodes and the inductors when you remove them. Otherwise, it's pretty straightforward but tedious and time-consuming. I used trichlor (sold as "Carbo-Chlor" or "Carbo-Sol" to dissolve and remove the glue.  Use only in a well-ventilated area!

73, Zack W9SZ

A couple of points here -

1 - As already noted, a device that works as an amp at 27 MHz is not likely to work at 144 MHz.  

2 - Many of the cheaper CB amps are not very good, even at 27 MHz. You can always build your own. My favorites are the amp circuits designed by Helge Granberg K7ES when he worked for Motorola.  His designs are available as Motorola application notes. You could do a Google search for amp designs for 144 MHz, too.

3 - I own several Mirage amps and they have been doing a fine job. Just a little more expensive than building your own, but don't require the technical know-how (or patience) needed when building your own equipment.

73, Zack W9SZ

The TS-440S doesn't have a built-in keyer.  The TS-850 definitely does.  I have both rigs and think of the 850 as the "big brother" to the 440.

I've been working on a tiny keyer using the Microchip PIC10F200, which would be a complete keyer on a postage-stamp sized board.  If I ever get done with writing the code, I'll have something I can tack into any radio with a bit of sticky tape.

I bought replacements from RF Parts.  They are a great company to deal with.

Be forewarned, though, that the tubes currently available are not the same as the originals and it requires a bit of modification of the rig.  RF Parts has a data sheet regarding their use in the FT101E, if you ask for it. It's not a difficult mod but you do have to change some capacitors.

I've been making boards with Datak ER-71 negative-acting photoresist and ER-8 resist developer for years with excellent results.  This may be more involved than you care to get, but it DOES give excellent results!

These days I make the circuit pattern with a CAD program.  My favorite is CorelDraw.  This enables me, with a couple mouse clicks, to turn my artwork into a negative.  I print it on a laser printer on transparency film.  It usually requires some touch-up with a Sharpie pen to darken areas that print too light.

I clean and coat the board exactly per the instructions that come with the ER-71 photoresist.  I found you really have to coat the boards in a dark room with a bug light (yellow).  A regular incandescent bulb does deteriorate the quality of the resist.

I expose with a contact printer in bright sunlight for 3 minutes, then develop in the ER-8 for a minute and place the board face down on a couple layers of soft paper towels for a few seconds to drain, then carefully lift and let dry.  Sometimes I need to touch up areas of the photoresist with the Sharpie pen, but it's usually just little pinhole areas. I develop in ferric chloride.  Note - Radio Shack DOES sell ferric chloride solutions individually in bottles, not as part of a kit.

If you use Sharpie pens, ammonium persulfate tends to wash it off.  Sodium persulfate doesn't have this problem.

I've made multiple circuit boards of several key circuits with this technique and haven't had a bad board yet.  This includes about 10 of the KK7B no-tune 560 MHz microwave LO's, various microwave circuit boards up to 24 GHz, and recently quite a bit of surface-mount boards.  The Datak materials do very well with very tiny traces.

Hopefully you will see this before the coming weekend of March 26-27. It's the weekend of the CQWW WPX SSB contest.

If you don't hear some signals in the SSB part of the band (listen between 28300 and 28400), then I'm guessing the receiver has problems. This contest has always been known to make a live band out of a dead one!  

73, Zack W9SZ

One obvious thing everyone seems to be overlooking here is that the "operator" in question may indeed be licensed.  Did you get the callsign being used? If you go to http://www.hamdata.com and enter it, you can find info on the licensee including birthday (including year).

And voices over the air are sometimes deceiving.  A person may older than he/she sounds.

There's a very knowledgeable group of people at this Yahoo group:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TS-850_450_690

Feel free to join!

The TS-440 is notorious for its VCO unlock problem due to a contact cement Kenwood put on the VCO part of the circuit.  I successfully repaired mine by taking every component off that board and cleaning off all the glue.  Very tedious, but worked fine afterwards.

The TS-850 has a similar problem but it hasn't happened to mine yet.  I think it's due to some other cause, as there's no contact cement on the VCO circuits in the 850 AFAIK.

Morse Code (CW) may be old but it's not quite antiquated yet.  I'd suggest you learn it, try it and find out for yourself under which conditions it will or won't get through compared to other modes.

One of the remaining frontiers of ham radio is the the microwave part of the spectrum. Most QSO's above 1296 MHz take place using CW.  Those of us who actually OPERATE up there know the advantages from experience.

Check this web site out for the description of a new record in one of the "final frontiers":

http://www.mgef.org/zms_241_vucc.htm

Note in particular the technical details of the station.  How many of us have the technical capability to put together such a station (or two, so you will have someone to work)?

If you prowl around some of the links on this page you'll find actual recordings of the QSO's you can play back.  See if you can hear the CW in the noise! (I can.)

Now imagine doing something like that yourself, and go for it!

Hello Jason from another UIUC alumnus! I still live in Urbana.

I have been attending hamfests for over 35 years.  It is true that they aren't like they were in 1975 but they still have appeal for me.  There were several large hamfests in Illinois this year; they were mostly well-attended.  I bought something at each one (not necessarily large items) but I also got to eyeball QSO with people I don't get to see very often.  

We usually have a small group of people from the C-U area that sells some things at hamfests.  One of the tricks of selling is to have more than one person to man your table so you can roam and see what others are selling and what their prices are like.  You may want to readjust your prices on some things based on what you see.

Don't give up on hamfests, and I hope you do better next time.