A Hallicrafters S40A receiver in 1950 was $99.  This was the most popular receiver of its time.  Towards the lower end of the Hallicrafters line.  In current dollars this is equivalent to $946.44.  For a lower end receiver, this was 3.5 months of 1950 average pay ($3210).  Pretty expensive.

I am glad that some hams have the money to buy the super expensive rigs.  That gets technology going, which eventually works its way down to most of the rest of us.  When the first wall mounted TV screens came out, they went for more then $20K with so so quality. 

Tom, I agree with you that stubs are not equivalent to bandpass filters.  I found 10 to 15 db improvement, noticeably less than good bandpass.  But junk RG6 costs nothing.  In our case, with antennas fairly far apart, the stub improvement was adquate, and priced right.

Another possibility is coaxial stubs.  These are usually 1/4 wave length (adjusted for velocity factor of coax).  RG6 works fine.  A 1/4 wave length, shorted at end, is basically an open circuit in that band, and more or less a short on other bands.  A 1/4 wave length, open on end, is basically a short on that band.

I made up a box with a switch and several lengths of RG6 coax.  We used at field day.   One of the radios had fairly high phase noise, so the box was connected to that radio.  The coax's tended to reduce phase noise on the other bands.  I measured between 10 and 15 db (mostly 15) of improvement.  Not as good as bandpass filters, but RG6 is cheap.  You could make up a simple one-band filter with one length of coax and a T connector.

Is this post still going on .... and on..... and on.  Enough already.

At our club we had four stations going.  No problems with too much voltage to receivers.  But phase noise was a problem, which bandpass filters would help (when rigs are on different bands).  Unfortunately at least two of the stations, for example CW and SSB, would both want to operate on 20M during day, and that caused a fair amount of cross-interference.  Prior years that problem had been much worse but our antennas were further apart this year.

It's been a while since I looked at the fastenings.  How about captive nuts, like the attached from Graingers?  Lots of sizes.

http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/captive-nuts/nuts/fasteners/ecatalog/N-8lf?Ndr=basedimid10071&sst=subset

I will hate to see the Flex 6000 actually ship.  Would mean the end of these soap-opera posts.  Oh, I forgot:  next season will compare features vs hype.  Very entertaining. 

Mine came today.  Horray

I have the 61Khz problem and I don't have any switching power supplies to the routers or switches.  Same interference with Netgear and Linksys routers.  Also with Cisco switches.  I only use old style transformer type power supplies.  And not coming from any other wall warts in house:  If I disconnect all cat5 cables from router output, noise stops.  Adding one cable, no matter which one, noise starts.  Even if other end of that Cat5 cable is connected to nothing.  So obviously internal to router (or switch), and apparently being radiated by the cable.  And not from anything else in house.  I also added multiple clamp on ferrites to all cat5 cables, not any difference I could detect.

Nick, UA3DX, got the QSL cards about 1 1/2 months ago, and is sending them out at rate of about 500 per week.  I had not received mine, and he passed along this info to me.  John.

I'm glad for this post.  It reminded me that I hadn't requested my QSL card.  Thanks!!!!

I would like to add one technical skill:  the ability to run a meeting.  Diarrhea of the mouth and letting others in the meeting take control over discussion, will kill a club meeting (and membership). 

Floyd, re NaP3, I am currently using TRX Pan with my K3.  I'm wondering how NaP3 compares with TRX Pan:   complexity of install, use with less than super fast PC, user friendliness.   John.

Per http://dx-world.net/2012/dxpedition-costs/ (the Hamvention forum program), the southern oceans DXpeditions are about the most expensive, with range of $475K to $160K in the anaylsis.  Average of $323K.  Of this amount, team members provided 63% of funding, foundations 25%, and individuals 12%.

What really caught my eye was the big difference in individual support by area, with NA maybe 10x per individual of the average for Europe.  Seems to me there is a limit that we can expect team members to pony up, and if we want more DXpeditions, it's going to take more individual $'s (directly, via OQRS, or as donations to foundations).  To put it bluntly, European hams need to step up to the plate. 

I like OQRS.  It saves me $1.05 postage and cost of card, plus a couple of dollars for return postage.  So $3 is about a wash for my costs.  If the OQRS is $3, I'll typically bump up by $2 (to $5 total) to help out the DXpedition cost.

At last year's Dayton Hamfest, one of the forums showed the high cost of some of the recent DXpeditions.  Very expensive, especially those to the really tough places.  That really didn't surprise me.  But what did catch my eye was data on where the financial support came from.  Those on the DXpeditions put up a lot of dough, several of the DX organizations made contributions, and equipment suppliers helped out a bunch.  The rest came from individual contributions.

To the nub of it:  Almost all of the individual contributions came from NA hams.  Almost nothing from Europe.

So to my suggestion:  Increase OQRS from the typical $3 to $5 so that everyone helps at least a little.  Donations still accepted above and beyond.  Is that "selling" of QSL cards?  I don't think so, not when you look at the huge expenses.  And still allow for direct, non OQRS, QSL's and bureau, for those that strongly object to the OQRS amount.

What do you think?