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Speak Out: Your Biggest Mistake:

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K5END on 2009-10-17
Just before Hurricane IKE blew through here I took down all my antennas and crammed them and other lawn stuff into my ham shack. I figured the wind could pick up anything I could. It was kind of a crowded mess in the ham shack, but time was short and critical.

My day job kept me busy about 18 hours a day as part of and during the hurricane recovery for a few weeks. I was worn out.

When I finally got a break, I wanted to get back on the air. I pulled up an antenna outside and hooked the AT-100 up inside to "tune up." It didn't tune worth a hoot at first but eventually the relays stopped clicking and the SWR was OK. Still, no one could hear me very well. I turned up the power, but to no success.

After some troubleshooting I discovered I had hooked the AT-100 output up to the coax lead to the base of the dismantled HF6V on the table next to my right arm.

How I kept from getting RF burns I will never know. A miracle, I guess.

Scared the ++++ outta me.

That was a close one. I'm also very glad it didn't burn my two bird dogs in the shack. I could just envision myself on the TV show "Animal Cops" as the guy accused of torturing his own pets.

Lesson learned.

Even the most obsessive safety nut can make a stupid, Darwin-award type of mistake.

Someone was watching out for us that evening.

WB4AUW on 2009-10-14
Getting rid of my TS-820 and FT-101B.

K9FON on 2009-09-20
Not too long ago, i was tuning up my Yaesu Ft 101EE and didnt realise that i was not on my dummy load. After i did the initial tuneup i gave a "hello, hello, hello" to check the modulation and i heard "The frequency is busy Mr hello, hello!" I almost fell off my chair due to embarassment. :-(

KO0KY on 2009-09-19
There are almost too many to list:

I have a Kenwood TM-201B in my car. Once I left some books in the passenger seat, ON TOP OF MY MIC!! It was on all night long. Fortunately I did not have a tone board yet, so it did not activate the repeater, but I'm sure the sound of silence was jamming someone here or there. BTW, the radio was so hot I thought it was totally fried. Nope, like it never happened. Tough rig.

Two or three times I have wandered into slices of the HF bands where I did not have privileges. I've done that as a novice, a tech, and as an advanced. I finally upgraded to Extra, in disgust, just to prevent the problem in the future. I don't chase a lot of DX, so the split freq thing hasn't bit me. Yet.

I was at Field Day once, as a very young and ignorant novice, and hooked up a 10 meter beam for some 40 meter CW action. The Kenwood 520 (not mine BTW) got hot as a pistol in the next hour before an older, wiser ham came by and saw my error. The radio was OK, but my reputation was fried.

Not ham radio related, but at work as an electronic tech, I was working on a 110 VAC powered modem board (AT&T) live. I followed all the rules, rubber mat, one hand in pocket, etc. Well, I crossed power and ground with a multimeter probe. Big flash, sparks, and I fell on my tush. After the smoke cleared and it was known that I was physically OK, I was tagged "John of arc", which stuck for years.

Ciao,

KO0KY

WA5TCZ on 2009-09-19
I did not have my ticket long at this time.
I was working 40 m ssb calling cq when a station came back to me.
It was a good conversation about how radio works and about how the Q of a circuit or coil determened how well the coil would work.
I went on and on telling this person and trying to show how much knoledge I had about Q of circuits and trying to impress the ham on the otherend of the contact.
Being young Im shure I told him many wrong things in our conversation.
The genteleman only graciously agreede with me and we ended the conversation.
About a week later I received a QSL card from the genteleman and was shocked it was radio genius W1HRX Mr.James Millen.

W4LWZ on 2009-09-19
Back in 1956 I was a 13 year old novice. My first station was a Heathkit AT-1 and a National SW-54. I had one crystal for 3735 kHz. My first antenna was an 80 meter dipole.
The problem was in the antenna feed line. I knew that coax was shielded cable and I had some shielded mike cable. Shielded cable is shielded cable, I treated the mike cable like coax and wondered why my AT-1 loaded kinda funny and I couldn't make any contacts. A friend of mine finally came over to the shack and saw the problem. he gave me a heathkit antenna tuner and we turned the dipole into a long wire. Things worked a lot better after that.

N6CAZ on 2009-09-18
I learned a lesson about the operating temperature for my old Yaesu FT-8100 mobile. On a cold winter morning (cold being relative to where I am in southern California obviously, but there had been a frost) my radio became unresponsive. I couldn't even turn it off, let alone know what it was doing. After a few moments of cursing and probably dropping an f-bomb or two, I finally pulled the faceplate from the remote cradle and reattached it. The radio powered back on and all was well.

After a few moments of quiet, I ID'd on the repeater I had been using and was informed very politely that every detail of my problem had been heard loud and clear as the radio was apparently stuck in TRANSMIT!!

N4SXX on 2009-09-18
my mistake ( kinda ) I have 2 great kids BUT ! when my girl was @ 4-5 I left my rig on while I pumped gas and before I could get to the mic. she was hollering " sex sex sex !" note the call (sxx) child only heard what she thinks dad has said in pile ups

AA5JG on 2009-09-17
Not discovering 6 meters earlier. Didn't get on that band until 1992. Of course it was alot more expensive to get a 6m rig and 100 watt amp back then.

73s John AA5JG

KJ4OTU on 2009-09-17
My biggest blunder (so far) was also my very first ham radio transmission. I was about 6 years old and my mom and dad had just gotten their novice licenses. Dad had a borrowed rig in his shop and was letting us kids listen to the phone transmissions from overseas. My brother and I were amazed! In my excitement I quickly grabbed the mic and said the only thing I had ever heard transmitted over a radio like this one: "MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY" (we watched a war movie or two as kids). Needless to say, that day my dad "taught" me a thing or two about the finer points of emergency communications on ham radio... ;-)

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