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Author Topic: Ham in the making?  (Read 805 times)

G3EDM

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Re: Ham in the making?
« Reply #15 on: July 13, 2021, 12:42:02 AM »

I fear that homebrewing is a dying art, Martin.
73 
Al - K8AXW

Al,

That one is a little difficult to quantify. If you restrict the conversation to ham radio, what is obvious is that the cost/benefit equation has changed because the inflation-adjusted cost of fantastic new gear is much lower than it was in the past.

Someone like me, starting to homebrew about a decade ago and without a legacy "junkbox" from picking over stuff at hamfests and so forth, ends up spending quite a lot of money just on components. Then there are the tools, and if you love good tools, you spend a lot. If you live in a small home, there is the added challenge of finding workshop space. (I am actively considering renting workshop space away from our home because finding enough space for a workbench in the new QTH is such a challenge.)

Finally of course there is the time involved, which can be huge, although it is hard to call that a "negative" factor because if you enjoy doing it, the more hours you spend, the better.

So very different in the past when homebrewing a really basic Novice rig was the only economic option for young, beginning hams. That, it seems to me, was the reason so many people homebrewed stuff. Some hams stayed with it for the rest of their lives, others moved on as soon as they could afford the commercial gear!

The golden age for homebrewing seems to have been about 1945-1960, spurned by economic necessity and the existence of abundant military surplus equipment and "junk" components from discarded TVs and so forth. By the mid-sixties, the cost/benefit equation was probably beginning to shift already.

The old ethos has not gone away completely. There are some homebrewers on this forum who manage to build much more advanced stuff than I do while still probably spending appreciably less money. You can often improvise with tools rather than having exactly the right tool for the job. You can pick up a widget at a hamfest or wherever for virtually nothing, and then design your circuit around it.

Also there appear to be categories of ham gear that are still often homebrewed. The two obvious ones are antennas (and their accessories such as tuners), and linear amplifiers. There also seems to be a thriving market in kits for basic QRP transceivers, and although a kit is not "fully" homebrew, it can be a gateway to homebrewing.

Here in the UK, magazines such as RadCom and Practical Wireless still churn out reams of homebrewing articles. Obviously, RadCom just comes in the mail because I'm an RSGB member. To my delight, Practical Wireless is in the newsstand at the corner store right next to my home in this small village!

You may be right that homebrewers like me, for whom the means are almost more important than the end, may be quite rare. But I suspect that they were rare in the past, too. What's changed is the economics.

The other day I was reading the RSGB manual for 1968, which included a description of the homebrewed G2DAF receiver. "... the construction and alignment of a receiver of this type cannot be undertaken lightly; for the average constructor the work involved is likely to take up to six months or more of leisure time." Nineteen tubes, double conversion, and all sorts of bells and whistles.

For me, that's bliss, although it is the sort of project that is way beyond my current skills and requires a long apprenticeship in homebrewing before it should be attempted. There is also the paradox that the most advanced building projects published in books would normally be built by hams who should be quite capable of designing their own gear, so you really have to wonder how many people built exact replicas of the G2DAF receiver "back in the day" (or for that matter, the U.S. HBR series of designs).

73 de Martin, G3EDM
« Last Edit: July 13, 2021, 12:44:03 AM by KB1WSY »
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K8AXW

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Re: Ham in the making?
« Reply #16 on: July 13, 2021, 11:37:09 AM »

Martin,

IMHO, you're correct on all points.  I lost track of you a little over two years ago...maybe longer.  At that time you was still in negotiations with your neighbor about using his tree as an anchor point and was close to the end of eternity on getting your homebrew TX on the air.  Now your in the UK?

I you would care to fill me in between these two times I would be happy to hear what finally happened.  You can contact me at: K8AXW@arrl.net.  If that doesn't work we can go to plan "B." Or not.

73

Al - K8AXW
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G3EDM

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Re: Ham in the making?
« Reply #17 on: July 13, 2021, 12:10:16 PM »

Al,

I can update you right here. I lived in America for 19 years (1999-2018). While there, I renewed my involvement in the ham radio hobby, starting in 2012 when I obtained a U.S. General licence (which I am now spelling the British way!).

You remembered correctly that the issue was hoisting an antenna. I am a lifelong renter, and my former American landlord (although a former ham himself) vetoed putting my antenna on his property, largely because of objections from his family. He actually suggested putting it on the neighbours' property!

Well, I tried that. Problem is, this was in the suburbs of Boston, and the neighbouring property was a classic New England "triple decker" which has been turned into condos, of which there were four. I spent a couple of years trying to get all four condo owners to approve the antenna idea. It was never going to happen, because, among other things, only one of the four condo owners had even heard of ham radio. For the other three owners, it was some kind of weird "radiation" issue even though I was only proposing to do 40m QRP.

Fast forward to now. Three years ago, for reasons that have nothing to do with radio, we moved to the UK. We are still in rented housing, but this time it is a separate home with (by British standards) a large garden: 20 metres lengthwise. Plus, hallelujah, our landlord (a mechanical engineer who teaches auto mechanics in a nearby technical college) has no objection to my hobby, or my antenna, as long as I do not damage the fabric of his house in the process.

A couple of weeks ago I was licenced in the UK as G3EDM. This was based on my 50-year-old pass certificate in the British Radio Amateurs' Examination, earned as a teenager. I have a "Full Licence" which is equivalent to the U.S. Extra, apart from the lower power levels that apply to all UK hams on a Full Licence: basically 400W on HF.

The only reason I am still posting as KB1WSY on eHam is that I am still waiting for the forum operators to change my user name, which was requested a couple of weeks ago and is still listed as "pending". The U.S. call expires next year and I will just let it lapse.

Anyway, my first-ever key-down is imminent. Today I was out in the garden measuring up everything for the antenna and starting to cut wire. I've been storming through Morse code revision and only have a handful of characters left to revise. So, very soon indeed, I will be on the air.

Edited to add that my English shack is tiny, consisting of a shallow closet in the guest bedroom. No workshop space yet (yuck).



73 de Martin, G3EDM (the suffix is the initials of my late grandfather, who was commanding officer of a frontline wireless telegraphy unit in World War One).
« Last Edit: July 13, 2021, 12:17:50 PM by KB1WSY »
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KM1H

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Re: Ham in the making?
« Reply #18 on: July 13, 2021, 01:39:05 PM »

Quote
Plus, hallelujah, our landlord (a mechanical engineer who teaches auto mechanics in a nearby technical college) has no objection to my hobby, or my antenna, as long as I do not damage the fabric of his house in the process.

Fabric house? I hope the wolf wont blow it down....

Carl
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K8AXW

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Re: Ham in the making?
« Reply #19 on: July 17, 2021, 11:20:31 AM »

Martin,

Another try.  I've answered your post but before I can "POST" it, I hit a key and the post disappears.

Let me say "you are one persistent guy" or the worlds greatest procrastinator!   :)

I don't understand "Morse code revision."

73

Al - K8AXW
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G3EDM

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Re: Ham in the making?
« Reply #20 on: July 17, 2021, 12:47:00 PM »

Let me say "you are one persistent guy" or the worlds greatest procrastinator!   :)

Probably both. All I can say is that my first QSO is approaching fast, within weeks for sure. Spent today building my simple 40m dipole antenna, the next week will be installing it. It's easy, the main delay is caused by waiting for stuff ordered online to arrive at my home. The QTH is fairly antenna-friendly (which was never the case in the past) but there are some simple adaptations to make.



I don't understand "Morse code revision."

I made several attempts to learn the code. My first was in 1968 at 13wpm using the LPs actually narrated by Farnsworth. The second was in 2012-13 and I did get all the way to the end, at 17wpm, but never got on the air. So when I speak of "revision" I guess I am using a British term for, "getting back up to scratch with stuff you know already, but are rusty". I have about another week left to get my Morse skills back to where they were eight years ago.

73 de Martin, G3EDM
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K8AXW

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Re: Ham in the making?
« Reply #21 on: July 17, 2021, 05:31:40 PM »

Martin,

Haven't you been LISTENING to Morse during tis time??   ::)
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K1FBI

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Re: Ham in the making?
« Reply #22 on: July 17, 2021, 06:02:05 PM »

Martin,

Haven't you been LISTENING to Morse during tis time??   ::)

Who is Morse?
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K3UIM

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Re: Ham in the making?
« Reply #23 on: July 17, 2021, 06:36:00 PM »

John,

When he came to America (from Ireland, of course) his last name was Codelowinski, but it was shortened to "Code" since the Immigration official couldn't pronounce it. They also changed his first name to "Mousey", but he didn't like the sound of "Mousey Code" so just kept it as "Morse Code". (You probably already knew this, but I want any newbees to know it.)

(No charge for the info.)

Charlie
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Charlie. K3UIM
Where you are: I was!
Where I am: You will be!
So be nice to us old fogies!!

G3EDM

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Re: Ham in the making?
« Reply #24 on: July 18, 2021, 10:35:40 AM »

Martin,

Haven't you been LISTENING to Morse during tis time??   ::)

I've been out of the hobby for approximately five years. For the past three years I had no rig set up and frankly thought (incorrectly) that getting back into the hobby was too hard because of restricted space at the new QTH. So, no, I have not been listening which of course would have helped!

73 de Martin, G3EDM
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W2EAF

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Re: Ham in the making?
« Reply #25 on: July 21, 2021, 05:50:34 PM »

It just kills me when people say ham radio is a waste of time because you can just make a phone call or get on the internet. As Dr. Evil said to his son Scott in the Austin Powers movie "you just don't get it, do you?"
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G3EDM

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Re: Ham in the making?
« Reply #26 on: July 22, 2021, 11:59:19 PM »

It just kills me when people say ham radio is a waste of time because you can just make a phone call or get on the internet. As Dr. Evil said to his son Scott in the Austin Powers movie "you just don't get it, do you?"

It is extraordinary how people take the modern "network" (the internet and the mobile phone/data network) for granted. I am still stunned by it. Because of my age, I can remember when this would have been the stuff of science fiction.

To me it is just as great a wonder that we, as hams, can communicate with people on the other side of the world using nothing more than a fully independent installation, dependent only on mains or battery power, skipping radio waves off the ionosphere, with no network involved. This is actually how I try to explain the appeal of ham radio to non-hams who ask about it, although even in people of my age (late middle age) I usually draw only a blank stare.

That is what brought me into the hobby in the first place, but then I got sidetracked by building my own gear! That surely ought to appeal to the present-day "maker" movement.

Finally there is the very uncertainty of HF skip communication. Although a lot of scientific brainpower has been deployed in predicting propagation conditions, there is still the magic of suddenly hearing a signal from another continent emerge out of the fading and QRM. In that sense the hobby has something in common with others such as fishing or, I suppose, hunting -- neither of which I am remotely interested in but I do understand that appeal because it is shared with radio.

73 de Martin, G3EDM
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K3UIM

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Re: Ham in the making?
« Reply #27 on: July 25, 2021, 12:33:55 PM »

I'm thinking that this will be my last attempt to try to find a tinkerer/builder/electronics lover, as I'm not getting any younger!  :'(
Anyone?  ;D Please?
Charlie
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Charlie. K3UIM
Where you are: I was!
Where I am: You will be!
So be nice to us old fogies!!

WA2ONH

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Re: Ham in the making?
« Reply #28 on: July 25, 2021, 01:13:46 PM »

....  Preferably a "youngster with potential? (Hopefully someone that already has a start in that direction.)
Charlie

A "youngster" of what AGE? You never indicated it.

Came across these items from the "Life Savvy" site
https://www.lifesavvy.com/

Spark Their Curiosity with a STEM Subscription Box for Kids
https://www.lifesavvy.com/84869/spark-their-curiosity-with-a-stem-subscription-box-for-kids/

8 Subscription Boxes to Keep Your Kids Busy All Summer
https://www.lifesavvy.com/80686/8-subscription-boxes-to-keep-your-kids-busy-all-summer/

Any Interest and/or help?

My Interest in radio was greatly advanced because I met someone my age (13) and he was a already a licensed amateur - General Class. Within a year I was licensed at 14. And a group of like minded and same age friends began to grow because we could all play RADIO!

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73 de WA2ONH  <dit dit> ... Charlie
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KM1H

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Re: Ham in the making?
« Reply #29 on: July 25, 2021, 06:23:04 PM »

Charlie is even older than me!!
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