[Hallicrafters] Join Saturday HCI 40 Meter Net And Win!

[Duane Fischer, W8DBF]

Please park the snow shovel, accidentally sever the line cord to the Snears 
Super Sucker vacuum with the gormet Chef's knife your Aunt Gurney got you 
for Christmas and have a forgetful moment or three and pitch all those 
"honey do this or else ..." lists stuck all over the house with those stick 
ynote things into the wood burner and join us! All work may make Jack lots 
of jack, (an American slang term meaning money, AKA green stamps), but it 
also tends to make Jack dead long before he should be horizontally oriented! 
So warm up vacuum that does not suck the life right out of a Dust Bunny, and 
join os on Saturday January 28th for the HCI 40 meter Net.

The pre-Net will commence at/about 12:30 PM EST, (1730 UTC), or as soon as I 
can gently motivate those five tuning slugs with tri-focals and a severe 
drought in the brain cell department, to drift elsewhere with their old 
seven foot+ high, the size of a telephone booth!, Collins AM transmitters 
they claim to have found abandoned in a storage room in the basement of the 
city morgue with the last person using the phone still inside the booth, 
waiting, on hold! What can I say? These guys are in some little wide spot in 
the cow path trail of life in atown known as Crittersville, Tennessee. Don't 
get me wrong, I love Tennessee with her beautiful woodlands, smoke shed 
sugar cured home raised Ham like you can't find anywhere else!, some real 
music on instruments hand made and words to songs that make your soul 
quiver, and did I mention some of the best Bourbon refined, or is it 
distilled?, anywhere in this solar system! It not only warms your body on a 
cold night, kills the horrific gag a maggot on a ripe garbage truck taste of 
Uncle Dudley's Castor oil + Cod liver cure all tonic while deicing your 
glass eye, it can also unplug a clogged septic hole under the old Outhouse! 
But when you get out of your vehicle in this Alfred Hitchcock like-town the 
residents never say a word. They just stare at you like your fly was at half 
mast and your purple polka dot boxer shorts were in full view! But that look 
in their eyes, sends little shivers of pure unadulterated terror up and down 
your spinal column like a stampede of confused junior high school kids 
desperately running back and forth in the cafeteria trying to find the fire 
exit doors after one of those former tag team semi-pro lady wrestlers turned 
school cafeteria cook, shouted "And if I see any one of you nutrient 
deprived little jellyfish terds dumping your turnip greens with raw 
rutabeggah chips and mashed spinich with goat's milk cheese dip into the 
fifty-five gallon garbage can, I am going to stuff you in there head first 
and ass up to fetch it!" Sorry, I drifted a little off the target there. The 
inhabitants look at you with one of those penetrating stares that make you 
wonder if they are going to invite you for supper or be their supper!

The Net proper will begin at 1:00 PM EST, (1800 UTC). The frequency will be 
7.280 MHZ lsb+/- for key clicks, mike splatter and the unmistakeable sound 
of what for all the world may sound like the Watkins Glen, NY Grand Prix 
time trials for the poll slot being run five feet behind the NCS chair! 
Actually it is my fourteen year old grandson, Brandon, beta testing the 
incredible Sony Play Station #3, AKA PS-3. (No product endorsement intended, 
being totally blind the X-Box looks just as good to me! (LOL!)) Thanks to 
some friends who own a company that specializes in product testing of video 
games and associated hardware and accessories, Brandon gets to try them, but 
he also has to fill out many pages of questions and compose a 1000 word 
evaluation as to why he liked or did not like the product being tested. What 
you may hear is some very popular road racing game, who's name I am not 
allowed to mention, but it is so real with the new high definition that you 
swear you are there! It even has scents to add to the realism! Nothing like 
a nose full of 115+ octane aviation fuel to give "headache" new meaning and 
the acrid odor of smouldering hot burning rubber that always causes me to 
involuntarily leap out of my NCS chair, thinking the Heathkit SB-220 has 
overheated and one of the 3-500Z have set the foam filled cushion under my 
rump ablaze! The grandson thinks it is funny, as he hasn't seen Gramps move 
that fast since some beached Whale with a lit cigar at a car show flicked 
his hot ashes and they landed in Gramps ... That one helped my Chiropractor 
make six months worth of payments on his Dead Sea Winter home!

So join us tomorrow and let's sell some vintage gear so you can dust away 
the layer of topsoil that has accumulated beneath, share some technical 
wisdom (which these guys are fantastic at knowing and doing!), have a few 
laughs, share some favorite Halli happenings from last year or last century, 
enjoy some historic tidbits as a former Hallicrafters employee stops by to 
say Hey!, Gary has another fabulous Ham Fest lie to tell about the 
steal/deal of the century - as only he can tell them!, and just some 
absolutely indescribable fellowship with the greatest bunch of Hams on this 
third iron core based rock from old Sol. Be there! Be counted! And even if 
you are not fortunate enough to own a Hallicrafters, we forgive you and 
welcome you just the same. Yes, even former Collins owners! (Collins made 
some great gear, once upon a time I owned two R-390a built by the master, 
Chuck Ripple.) You can hear how every manufacturer except Hallicrafters 
failed the military's infamous 'drop and smash' test! Truth! Hallicrafters 
got $150 million worth of military contracts during WW2 and that, friends, 
sixty-five years ago, was a lot of hundred thousand dollar bills! Do any of 
you know who's picture was on the $100,000 bill?


Duane Fischer, W8DBF
NCS: Hallicrafters Collectors International
Netcontrol at w9wze.org
HHRP: http://www.w9wze.org

P.S. The long awaited two CD set of rare, one of a kind, live audio 
recordings of Bill Halligan, Sr. Chief Engineer Fritz Franke and more are 
shipping on Monday January 30th! You will be notified by e-mail the day that 
your copy ships.