[PVRCNC] Market for Back Issue Ham Magazines in NC?

[KI7WX@aol.com]

Nat,

Before you sell them for $0.25 a copy at a hamfest, see if the campus library would like to take them and put them in the archives so that future generations can enjoy them.  

Our college club station, W1YK, had QST going back to the dawn of man. The campus library took them off our hands and now it's a nice resource for the club and local hams.

In terms of getting the ham shack revitalized, there are two good sources of real money. Your school likely has some sort of budget for club activities. Most any group of people with an interest can follow the rules, be recognized as a formal club, and access this budget. If there isn't already a ham club, form one asap and get on the list to access this source of cash. If you can find a faculty member that's a full professor to advise the club that is good too.

The second source of $$$ is alumni. Most schools will allow alumni to donate funds for a specific purpose. The alum gets a tax write off and the club gets some cash for the station. 

Gear works the same way. Many hams have all sorts of useful stuff lying around that can make a big impact on the typical college station. Contesters in particular often have very good radios and antennas lying about just collecting dust. (Based on the number of logs the central part of the PVRC contributed to the SS effort this year, there is also a large number of contesters lying around collecting dust too .... ..) You'd be amazed at the number of people with TS830s and TS930s sitting in garages or on shelves. Those are great rigs for a college club.

One thing I did to help W1YK was to sleaze my way onto the committee that passed out money to all of the colleges' clubs. There were six of us on this committee and we dispersed about 200K a year.  In two years I increased our clubs yearly take from about $500 to roughly $2500 bucks a year. While that may sound wrong, remember that part of college is to prepare you for the real world. What better way to learn about the world than to start by manipulating political based systems for your own ends? Or put another way, better new antennas for me than beer for the rugby club ;-)  The club still uses the antennas and OSCAR station today, the rugby club's beer is long gone.

Finally, if there is no HF rig today, I have a TS-530 that you can have for the station until you get a better one. It's not a modern rig, but it'll work 160M plus the WARCs and get you on the air.

Mark
KI7WX/6