
It ain’t much but it keeps me out of bars, consequently, it keeps me from behind bars too. The FT-900 gets almost all of my attention, mostly on 20 and 40 SSB. 10 when it’s open. If I am feeling adventurous, I take it down to the badlands on 80. It feeds, via the internal tuner, a 10/20/40 OCF dipole at about 25 feet. The FT-817 spends most of its time monitoring 146.52 or as a secondary receiver on HF. However, whenever I decide to “go digital”, or do some weak signal stuff on 6 or 2, it gets the spotlight. A Jetstream JTV680, although not “ideal”, keeps it somewhere above “legally deaf”. A quick (3 wire) disconnect, grab the Buddipole, and it is ready to go to the boondocks, or, more likely, the neighborhood park, for some QRP fun. The VX-8GR goes where I go. It keeps me in touch with the locals and, thanks to its APRS capability, I always know where I am. Take out the “smartphone”, bring up aprs.fi, and there I am, right there where I am. Now that I think about it, my phone has a darned good GPS itself. Maybe I could just…PERISH THE THOUGHT! The VR-500 serves mostly as test equipment. Since neither the FT-900 nor the FT-817 have sidetone capability on phone, I use it to talk to myself. Some Hams refer to this as “monitoring their signal”. I just attribute it to a couple of old saws, “No Ham does not love to hear himself talk” and “Sometimes the most interesting conversation you can have is with yourself”. No amps, no 99 foot towers, no 33 element yagis; I probably won’t be topping any charts or getting inducted into any hall of fames, I’m happy nevertheless. By the way, the rubber duck is a gift from my son and I just don’t have the heart to tell him that, no matter what I try, I cannot get it to resonate at any frequency. 73