I'm in a club, and I'm currently the club secretary. We have a weekly net on the repeater, and I'm net control at least once/month. Our finances are in good shape, and attendance is generally around 20 or so (except when our meeting coincides with Dayton). I hope that nobody at our meetings feels belittled or trivialized. There are 4 or 5 clubs in the immediate area, so I would hope that any offended hams would try one of the other clubs before giving up entirely.

We have programs, except for the November meeting which is club business, and December which is the club Christmas party. We do public service events, and generally have a good turnout on Field Day.

To summarize, I have a lot of fun in the club, and have gotten some great deals on gear.

My DX contacts are few because I operate QRP, and I'm still learning/practicing Morse code. Nobody makes fun of what DX I do manage, though. On Field Day last year, because of my inexperience with contests, I logged *one* contact. After that, one of the club members let me use his station for the IARU HF contest in order to help me improve my contesting techniques. As a result, I've improved and I'm ready to do better for this year's field day.

73,

-- Tom

I have an entry on eQSL right now that I haven't accepted, because it doesn't look right. I need to double check my log, and if I don't find it, reject it.

I upload to LoTW, and when qrz.com indicates that the ham will do postal QSL, send a card. I don't make enough contacts to make this prohibitively expensive yet. I will acknowledge QSLs on eQSL and qrz.com, but I won't log them there.

73,

-- Tom

The 209 made sense for me because I already had a counter. If I didn't have one, I would have gone with a higher up model, possibly not an MFJ at all. I gave it 3 stars in the review I wrote for eHam, and mentioned that without the counter, it wouldn't have been helpful to me.

As it stands now, I only use it occasionally. I'm QRP, with a random wire out my window, and I use my Emtech ZM-2 tuner with that, and the tuner allows me to tune without hurting my finals, since the power goes into some resistors until the LED goes out, indicating that it is tuned. I will use the MFJ when I get around to tuning my Par EndFedZ 10-20-40, and when I use my Blue Star P1 vertical (the P1 is only used when I go portable).

-- Tom

Because of money issues, I bought the MFJ-209, which works, but only because I had an old frequency counter I could connect to it. The dial wasn't all that close for the frequency under test.

You can check Hendricks out (qrpkits.com), and they have a deluxe antenna dipper, which will allow you to change the frequency and get an LED indicator (bright means no match, off means you are good). It's cheaper than the MFJ units. The only reason I don't have one is that it does have one SMT part, and while they claim it's not difficult to install, I can still see myself burning my fingers with it.

-- Tom

Sorry to be late in responding, but I didn't notice the reply, and I don't get alerts when someone replies to a thread I'm in.

I put Power Poles on mine, too, and I also put them on the power supplies and the batteries. So, I don't think that wiring up your own power cable is too difficult.

Thanks for reminding me to buy another batch of Power Poles.

73,

-- Tom

Congratulations. Maybe there is hope after all. This is the first time I've seen a seller win with PayPal.

73,

-- Tom

Forgive me for not understanding Paypalese, but does that mean you get your money, or that PayPal is not going to penalize you privileges for having had a reversal/chargeback?

73,

-- Tom

My first question would be what the price will be, so I can save up the money, but that's another good question. From the video, I don't know that I could assemble it with my big fat fingers. Hopefully, if it is kit-only, someone will offer to assemble it for a fee, which I am willing to pay.

73,

-- Tom

When I try and decide which side has the facts, I'll admit I have a bias for the one who can capitalize, use punctuation, spell correctly, and in general, not post like a tween's text message.

How is the original poster trying to get paid twice? How did you pay before you paid (and unpaid) via PayPal? And, regarding lawsuits, if you actually did proceed, you may eventually run into the term "vexatious litigant".

It sounds like the original poster was looking for a page similar to the ones Google has been cracking down on, the ones that just collect data off of other sites and include their own ads. I hate those sites.

Most ham radio dealers have web sites that, unlike some of their catalogs, have the prices there, and it doesn't take too much effort to just check a bunch of them. Sometimes, they make you add the thing to your cart before you can see the price, but that still doesn't obligate you to buy it.

I haven't received any bad service from any of the major dealers. However, the ones that are easiest for me to use show either the stock level, or at least if the item is in stock.

-- Tom

The tone board ended up costing me a bit more, since I wanted it to get here faster. So I ended up paying about $200 for a 25-30 year old radio. Go ahead, laugh it up...

It does work. I hit the club repeater and held it just fine, with good signal reports. I haven't measured the power output yet, to see how much gas it has left in it. I may buy a couple of radios for parts.

73,

-- Tom

Good idea. That's the way I went, so great minds think alike.

I got a 12v 7.5ah gel cell. It was reasonably cheap, and will run your radio for a few hours anyway. The 817 does eat batteries, even on receive. My battery isn't very big or heavy.

73,

-- Tom

I always send SASEs to US stations unless they say on qrz.com that they don't need them. Also, I don't send QSL cards to stations that say on qrz.com that they don't QSL by mail.

For DX stations, I send an SAE and either a couple of greenstamps (when allowed) or an IRC. For my lone contact to Cuba, I definitely sent an IRC, since Cuba participates in that and greenstamps are probably an arrestable offense, both for me and him.

I prefer cards, since I'm old school (I even read books on paper!), but also initiate LoTW confirmations, and reply to eQSL confirmations. I'm also QRP, so I don't get the high volume of contacts that make paper QSLing a financial nightmare for some heavy contesters.

-- Tom

I have the FT-817ND, and I like it a lot. A few pointers:

1.) It does eat batteries, even on receive. I personally use a 7.5ah 12v gel cell, which isn't too bad for portability.

2.) Given a decent antenna setup, SSB DX contacts are possible, but CW offers more frequent success.

3.) Unless you buy the mod from W4RT, it has no DSP. However, since most of the stations you will try and contact will be fairly strong, this isn't too much of an issue.

4.) I definitely recommend either the 500hz or the 300hz CW filter. I have the 300hz, only because that one was the only one in stock from the vendor at that time. Either are fine.

5.) Consider the NUE PSK31 standalone modem as an accessory. It is small enough to be portable and adds PSK31 and RTTY capability, although I've been told RTTY is difficult at QRP power levels.

-- Tom

Thanks, I will continue to do that. I did see one at Universal Radio that didn't have the three tone board, but a one tone board (that beat what I had) and I think it went for about $80.

Live and learn. I wish I could give him negative feedback, but I don't think eBay has ever put a stop to the retaliatory negative. I still buy ancient coins there, so I don't want my feedback tarnished. I don't think a negative would hurt him, because he claimed to have 4 accounts. I only have one, so it would bother me.

-- Tom