[Boatanchors] The Silence of the Bands

[Rob Atkinson]

I skipped DXCC and went straight to ragchewing and tube gear.  But for
a few years I wasted time on contests and plastic radios.  I enjoy CW
but as I get older I find that it seems like I have to be in a certain
frame of mind to enjoy it.  Copying for me takes some focus and that
takes energy and after I've worked all day I don't have it.  But when
I do operate CW, my most fun is with a little 807 rig, bug or TO Keyer
and 75A-3.  I have what is generally regarded as a great CW rig, a Ten
Tec Omni 6 but I almost never use it now.  I have to admit though that
currently, I could use more power than what comes from a single 807.
I'm working on getting an 813 rig going.  I think these hams who
operate CW with plastic radios are missing half the fun.

Some of the contesting folks have zero interest in ragchewing, except
when it is with another contester and the talk is about contests.
When there's no contest they're spending their time getting ready for
the next one.

I've been around computers to earn a living for decades so when I am
home and in my shop/shack there are no computers period.  I've told
this story before I think:  I was out in Palo Alto on business around
2005 or 2006 and near the end of my week out there, I took two hours
in the afternoon and drove to Sunnyvale to visit HRO.  They were in
the back of a strip mall building and had a display space about the
size of a large Radio Shack store.  I walked around and didn't see
anything that interested me but they had a PSK31 station setup and I
looked at it because that was my first time seeing one.  I watched
someone out in radio land slowly typing something and the cursor
slowly moved with it across the computer monitor.  I remember thinking
that this had to be about the most boring kind of radio I'd seen yet
but at least now I know why some people operate it.

Here in my town we have a 2 m. FM "yak" simplex frequency, 146.46, and
I purchased a 20 dollar HW-2036A at a hamfest and made a 5/8 wave
groundplane vertical for a weekly roundtable.  That's the extent of my
VHF and/or FM activity.  Cell/smart phones killed 2 meter and other
VHF ham FM land mobile activity, and now there's a "walkie talkie" app
for one of the smartphones.  So it has come full circle with the smart
phone becoming a two way radio.   Maybe next will be a SDR that
emulates a vacuum tube separate tx/rx pair.

73

Rob
K5UJ