If you have back issues of CQ, thumb through them for Dave Ingram's column; he occasionally ran glowbug QRP articles.

You could help by suggesting what kind of rig you want to build--crystal or VFO? desktop or portable?  AC or battery? few parts or many? any particular vacuum tube/s in mind? etc.

A vertical dipole should work just fine; 19¼" elements either side of the feed point. If you know where the repeaters are, you could add a reflector and/or director and get additional gain in their direction (search for 2- and 3-el Yagi antenna designs, or for a 2-meter Moxon antenna).

Another option is to tape an antenna to a window that faces the repeaters. A "Y" or "inverted Y," each with 19¼-inch legs, will put out a fairly hefty signal.

Third, invest in a 5/8-wavelength antenna, or make one yourself. They work well enough to allow you to move around inside your house and still access repeaters. A 5/8-wavelength antenna for 2-meters is roughly four feet long. GL

Another story has it that an early magazine, Home Amateur Mechanic, published an article on a radio transmitter its subscribers could make--thus a HAM radio.... But, as far as I know, no one has ever produced a copy of the article, or of the magazine itself.

However, in all my hamming, I've never seen or heard a definitive answer to the ham question, and one myth is about as interesting as another...like why do they call a place you park cars a driveway, and a place you drive cars a parkway?

Radio is not the only domain for vacuum tubes; they are/were also used in industrial and medical settings, too. Induction heating and welding applications, metal purification, x-ray applications, etc. Some of those applications require pretty high operating power, but don't necessarily need filtering. (Just my 2¢ guess).

Yes. This, from the FCC Rules:

Sec. 97.113  Prohibited transmissions.

    (a) No amateur station shall transmit:
   
    (4) ... messages in codes or ciphers intended to obscure the
meaning thereof, except as otherwise provided herein; ....

A vacuum  

I don't know what would be "best," nor the size of the coil, nor the kind of conditions the weather elements reside in (desert, arctic, tropics?), but a non-metal enclosure should suffice. Heck, I've even seen empty plastic 2-liter Coke bottles used on some bugcatcher style mobile antennas, and plastic food storage containers to protect outdoor loading coil systems.

Otherwise, a clear spar varnish or polyurethane coating should suffice.

Any protection scheme should to be periodically inspected and maintained.

Something like the FreqMite? http://smallwonderlabs.com/swl_frq.htm
or FCC-1? http://www.norcalqrp.org/fcc1.htm

Realize, too, that antenna resonance does not always occur at 50 ohms. A perfect vertical should show 36-ohms (36±j0), a "free space" dipole 72±j0 ohms, a one-wavelength loop should be around 100±j0 ohms, etc. An analyzer "analyzes" the antenna feed point for you, but it's up to you to figure out if the measurement makes sense, and how to best match it to your source or load impedance. So, to answer your original question; yes, the ohms reading should be as close to 50±j0 as possible at the transceiver end of the coax, as long as proper matching methods are used for whatever antenna Z you measure. An antenna tuning unit (ATU or transmatch) can get that 50 ohms for you. Check out http://fermi.la.asu.edu/w9cf/tuner/tuner.html and good luck.

That's an interesting film ("video" isn't appropriate for a film filmed in the '40s). By the time I came on the scene, they were called "electron" (not "electronic") tubes, or simply "vacuum tubes."  Nowadays some call vacuum technology "hollow state," vs. "solid state." Thanks for the posting.

Rex Harper, W1REX, coordinates a lot of QRP activities, including the popular Lobstercon gathering, from his Maine QTH. Give him a try.  Also, check if the NEQRP Club might have some leads; http://newenglandqrp.org/.

Try the FAQ area again. You should get to a page that says "eHam.net - Callsign / Username Change Request Form." It will show your old username and gives you a space to enter your new one. It may take a little time, but it will work.

That's a lot of money for a color antenna analyzer, isn't it? And what's the difference between a color antenna and a black-and-white one anyway? And besides, by radio is mostly black with silver trim; so I shouldn't need a color antenna analyzer, wouldn't you think?

So confusing....

Not sure what's in the RS starter kit, but I bought several kits from Smiley's Micros* for under $85. Joe also authored a series on Arduino projects and programming for Nuts & Volts magazine several years ago. Still, it's nice that RS will have these kits available to get more of the public interested in these little, yet powerful, processors.

http://www.smileymicros.com/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=67&MMN_position=114:114

You might send your request to the Managing Editor, Air Force Magazine, 1501 Lee Highway, Arlington, VA 22209, USA or go online to www.airforce-magazine.com. She (Juliette Kelsey Chagnon) might help, might know someone who can, or might publish your request in a future issue of the monthly publication.

The Air Force also maintains a historical research center at its Air University at Maxwell AFB in Alabama. Its web site is www.afhra.af.mil. They may be able to give you the information you seek. GL.

We did and we didn't. ADF was among the first navigation aids invented, back when pilots used broadcast stations as signals to home in on, and the broadcast stations back then were mostly AM. I guess there are still a lot of beacons on the air--I used to always use Prince Christian radio, OZN, at the tip of Greenland, when flying to and from Europe. But when OZN wasn't dialed in, you could bet some broadcast station was--it made those long, slow trans-Atlantic flights go a little quicker.