I have a couple sounders I inherited from my grandfather, who was a railroad telegrapher for many years.  I never thought to look for them on eBay, but I now see there are some beautiful instruments for sale there.

A sounder is basically a pair of coils which pull a steel bar down when energized so it hits a screw in a brass bar and makes a "click".  When it's de-energized, a spring pushes it back to another screw and it makes a "clack" (different note).  All the sounders I know of use DC, probably in the range of 6 to 12 volts.  It would have to be wired in series with the telegraph key.

I am guessing that $25 would be a decent price for one.

By the way, an earlier posting mentioned to include a Prince Albert can with your sounder as a gift.  The use of such cans and adjustment of the pitch of the clicks by adjusting the lid gave birth to the term "lid operator" which was a derogatory term the experienced RR telegraphers had for the newcomers. We hams have shortened it to just "lid".

I just bought 10 of them from Digi-Key (http://www.digikey.com).  I believe Mouser has them, too (http://www.mouser.com).

I've seen them all over the place and if you use the Google search engine for "LM723", I'm sure you'll come up with lots of sources.

I agree with the recommendations that it's probably not worth your time to convert an 11-meter rig to 10 meters when the HTX-10 and HTX-100 rigs are available at fairly low prices.  I've seen the HTX-100 going for $50 to $100.

If you're into homebrewing, I'd suggest the KK7B R2-T2 combination which appeared in QST some years ago. I've built a couple of them and they are fun and perform well. I believe there is a company that sells these as kits now.

I haven't checked into this lately, but when the 11-meter band was first transferred to CB use in the USA, it was still a ham band in many countries.  I'm not sure if this is still the case.

Back in the late 60's I had a ham receiver that was made when 11 meters was still a ham band.  It would tune continuously across the band.  I often heard things in between the regular CB channels, including SSB test transmissions by the French Atomic Energy Commission from some island in the Pacific!

11-meter 23 or 40 channel AM radios can be found at most hamfests, probably at almost giveaway prices.  But if you want a 10-meter only rig, I'd suggest looking for a used Radio Shack HTX-100 or something similar.  You can find these for $50 to $100 these days.  I wouldn't spend a lot of time trying to convert a CB radio to 10 meters when these other 10 meter rigs are so plentiful.

Some of the older all-band HF transceivers are fairly cheap, too.  I've seen some at hamfests for a couple hundred dollars.

The 12C509A/JW is a UV-erasable chip with a window on top.  The neat thing about it is that you can use a UV eraser and reprogram the same chip.  This is really handy in the development phases of projects when you're getting the bugs out of your programs.

The 12C509A-04/P is the exact same die as the JW chip, but you can't erase it because it has no window on top.  So it's a one-shot programmable chip.  The advantage of them is that they are about one-sixth the cost of the JW (windows must be expensive!).  Once you have your program working the way you want it, you can program lots of these inexpensive chips if you have a need for them.

Microchip has recently come out with flash programmable 8-pin microcontrollers.  These are even better since they are less expensive than the windowed versions but can be reprogrammed many times.  I haven't had a chance to play with them yet, but it appears the 12F629 will take the code for a 12C509 and perform the same as the 509.  I'll look at the data sheet in more detail to see if this can be done.  At the worst, the code may have to be modified slightly to change from one chip to the other.

I highly recommend the Astron SS-30.  One of the best around at a decent price.  Lightweight, well-built and will supply all the power needed for any 100-watt radio.

Check out these webpages:

http://n6tr.jzap.com/850repair.html

http://www.mods.dk/mods.php3?model=ts-850&radio=kenwood

The battery needs to be replaced if, when you turn on the radio, it goes to the default settings each time (14.000 MHz, etc.)  If it retains your last frequency used before you shut it off, the battery is probably still OK.

Good luck!  I find it fairly easy to work on the TS-850, but I have quite a bit of experience as an electronics repair tech.

There are probably 6 or 7 times the number of licensed hams in the USA than there were when I was first licensed, but I wonder where they all are. I would like to see some info as to how many are really active, how many operate on the various bands and modes, and how frequently.  It may be impossible to actually get this information, but it would be interesting!

Duh!!  I made a mistake - HP1 is a Panama callsign.

I've been on 144 MHz SSB/CW since about 1990.  My first "rig" was a transverter, each stage built in a separate box (5 boxes) spread out on the kitchen table. The IF rig was an HTX-100. It ran about 5 watts to a 5 element homebrew yagi I had set up on a tripod.  I could routinely work 50-100 miles with that setup! (I did have a GaAsFET preamp on the receiver).

I find I can routinely work 100-150 miles now with 5 to 20 watts and a 6 element longboom yagi (optimized with YO) up anywhere from 10 to 30 feet.  The noise level with various transverters or with my FT290RII is about S1-S2 here at most.

One thing you didn't mention is what kind of terrain you live in.  Are you in a valley?  You may need a high antenna to compensate for being lower than average terrain.  I do a lot of hilltop operation on VHF/UHF and there is definitely an advantage to being at least 80-100 feet above the average elevation with a shorter coax run.  The antenna only needs to be about 10-15 feet above ground in this case.

By the way, the Times LMR coax is my favorite for VHF/UHF.  It has about the lowest loss of any cable available. The LMR 400 is a great replacement for RG-8 and the LMR-195 is a great replacement for RG-58 if you want the smaller size.

It looks like most of your questions have been answered in the responses I see.

VHF SSB/CW has its own world of followers - we call ourselves "VHF/UHF/microwave weak-signal DXers".  SSB and CW will get you much farther than FM on these bands.  The bands are not always open, and the openings are usually short and unpredictable.  But when they are open, they are a lot of fun!

I have worked 400-500 miles with 5 watts and a 5-element yagi mounted on a tripod in my apartment.  But it does help to have a bigger beam up 30 feet or so.  I use various homebrew equipment (transverters, KK7B R2/T2 combination) for 144 MHz SSB/CW.  I also have an FT290R II which is a very good portable rig but I'd recommend putting a receive preamp in it as I did.  I frequently take my equipment to a hilltop in this area (east central Illinois, grid square EN50) and set up a beam to work some DX.

We are getting a group of people in this area active on PSK31 on 144.150.

Give it a try and see what you can work.

I have been hearing a CW beacon on approximately 27999.7 kHz for a couple weeks.  It uses an HP1 (Honduras) callsign (I forget the callsign at the moment.)  Not a very good DX frequency!  I am trying to find a way to contact the beacon owner to let him know his signal is slightly out-of-band.

These dishes work very well at 10 GHz.  The best info I've seen about how to use them is by Paul Wade W1GHZ.  See his home page at http://www.w1ghz.cx or http://www.tiac.net/users/wade/10g_home.htm.  See the sections of his On-Line Microwave Antenna Book about offset dishes and feeding offset dishes.

Zack W9SZ

There is a wealth of information about packet, APRS, etc. at the TAPR website http://www.tapr.org.

The TNC-2 firmware upgrade will do KISS mode.  As a guess only, I think it will not do APRS.  Perhaps someone who is more familiar with it can answer that question.  It should be fine for routine packet use.

The TNC-2 is a packet TNC only.  It will not do CW, RTTY, AMTOR, PACTOR, PSK31, etc.  For those modes I'd recommend one of the fine multimode units available.  I am very pleased with my PK232MBX/DSP unit for RTTY, AMTOR and PACTOR.  I have separate software and a sound card in my computer for PSK31, Feld-Hell and SSTV.

The EPROM had better be in a socket!  I think it would be rather stupid to solder an EPROM onto a board, as that defeats its purpose.

If you want to upgrade the firmware for the TNC-2 and don't have an EPROM burner, I can do it for you.  

73, Zack W9SZ

Welcome to the hobby!

Wow!  That's a pretty wide-open question.  It depends a lot on what you want to do.  Also, you didn't note what class of license you have.

For no-code licensees, I'd recommend getting a 2-meter or dula-band FM rig or a 2-meter all-mode (more expensive but more fun IMHO). The all-mode will also give you a taste of what can be done with SSB on the band, but note that FM signals generally use vertically-polarized antennas (such as a ground-plane) and SSB signals are generally horizontally polarized (horizontal beam antennas or loops).

For HF I'd recommend one of the many pieces of used equipment you can find around for not too much money.  About 8 years ago after being off HF for a while, I found an FT101E for $200 and strung up a sloping dipole from a tree (maybe an additional $30).  I worked my first 150 countries (mostly on 40 meter CW) with that rig!

As you learn more about what can be done you will probably develop specialized interests (DXing, contesting, digital modes, SSTV, weak-signal VHF/UHF work, etc.)

Zack W9SZ