AB3EI - Radio Free Raubsville

Interesting SEO Notes

2010-07-14T22:56:00.002Z

My wife Kass & I run a small business called Reconstructing History. We sell shoes, patterns, notions, books, and clothing - all stuff for historical reenactors and historical clothing enthusiasts.

The internet is crucial to our business's success.

We're losing our search-engine placement for some reason. This is ruinous. Something is broken; we're figuring out what it is. One quick fix is to get everyone we know to post five links to pages on our website. The links can be random; you can link to products (best bet), articles, etc. Links are best served surrounded by text. So if you go to your LJ and post something like, "These are my favorite five things from Reconstructing History" and add links, that'll work.

Please put five links in some web content somewhere you control. LJ or other blog, your HTML website, Twitter, discussion forums, whatever. Don't violate terms of use, of course; be intelligent.

Let's go viral!

Contesting

2007-03-15T11:27:00.000Z

Okay, people, it's official: I'm a contester.

I used to be a casual operator. If I heard a DX station, I'd try to work him; if I didn't after three or four shouts, that was okay. If there was a contest going on, I'd work a few stations before switching the rig off.

Frankly, I think I was afraid. Afraid of my piddly little station not standing a ghost of a chance with K3LR and W3LPL - hell, afraid of not being able to compete with the guy a few miles away with a tower and tribander. Field Day was always fun - and please don't flame me for calling it a contest; it is what it is - but I was always using someone else's nice equipment with pretty good antennas. It wasn't my station, which couldn't possibly be competitive, ever.

Then I stumbled across the North American QSO Party last year. 150-some QSOs later, I realized that my little station might actually allow me to have fun. So I started playing in contests even more. When I participated in last year's Pennsylvania QSO Party and made 17,000 points operating at 3/4 throttle for only half the available operating time, I really started thinking about my hangups.

See, I was worried about my station. Consisting as it does of twenty-year-old radio technology, it hasn't a prayer of being competitive against people with new rigs with all the digital bells and whistles. No DSP, no automatic notch, no digital bandpass filtering (for that matter, no filtering at all!) here at AB3EI. No tower, no yagi - no, not even a tribander - just a couple of wires strung up not that high at all, actually. Oh, and no amplifier.

There is a certain thrill to contacting as many stations as possible during a given time-frame; it's especially exciting when you find a rare station, the whole world is calling him, and you actually snag the contact with a station like mine. There's also a wonderful sense of accomplishment when you use your little grey cells to strategize your operation based on your station, skills, and endurance - and you meet your goal(s).

For me, it's good because even at my young age my body is incapable of sustained competitive physical sport (except maybe cricket or golf; I can't stand golf, and I haven't time for cricket). Yet I have a very wide competitive streak which needs to be satisfied. Moreover, I have little enough operating time that I need to carefully schedule my on-air activity. Planning for contest weekends allows me to fairly schedule my on-air time amongst the other family activities.

So for me it's always a win. ;)

Every contester operates for different reasons. Maybe your goal is to win. Maybe you want to beat your pal across town. Maybe you want to optimize your operating skills. Maybe you want to work that last country for an award. Whatever the reason, good for you, and bonne chance!

I'll see you on the air!

QSL - The Final Courtesy

2007-02-09T17:45:00.000Z

Speaking of QSLs, I've been doing a lot of thinking about the art of QSLing - sending and receiving QSL cards.

Like most amateurs, I've sent and received a lot of QSLs over the years. In days of radio yore, the QSL card was the only confirmation that contact was made on the air. The cards were used to prove the contacts for awards. For most amateurs and shortwave listeners (SWLs), though, QSLing was and is all about collecting little pieces of individual art from around the globe.

These days, there are alternatives to paper QSLing, like ARRL's Logbook of the World (LotW) and eQSL. I find them unsatisfying, personally, because I find a great deal of pleasure collecting the cards. I will therefore with clear conscience ignore them. The following will deal primarily with DX (long-distance) QSLing, for that is where things are very interesting from an awards and collecting standpoint.

Avoid fancy, dual-sided cards. Make sure your callsign and the QSO data appear on one side of the card and make it easy to read. Use a bog-standard font and color for your information. Using a fancy font in a wierd color makes it difficult for the DX operator or QSL manager to read your info, so make it plain as day. Most active DX ops and QSL managers have to wade through hundreds if not thousands of cards. If your card has two sides, the answerer will have to flip it. That and cursive fonts and pastel colors makes it more difficult, which increases the chances your card either gets binned or (at best) gets put into the "when I get around to it" (WIGATI) pile.

When filling out your cards, use an indelible black ink. For best results, make a sample copy and take it into the shower with you.

No, I am not kidding. Remember the US Postal Service motto? Let me paraphrase it: "We'll deliver your mail through all sorts of crappy weather, including gale-force, tropical-storm rain. While we're at it, we'll maybe drop in into a storm drain and step on it a few times." Now apply that to third-world postal "services." Get the picture? Let me make it more clear - you're waiting on that last card from East Jibip for DXCC, and it gets rained on when the banana fronds are blown off the post-office hut. The ink runs. Now Q13FZ can't reference his logs, because your QSO info is illegible.

The same holds for the ink with which your cards are printed. Most commercially-printed cards will survive the Shower Test. Lots of amateurs, your humble correspondent included, print their own, using a home or commercial inkjet or laser printer. Make certain the ink/toner is weatherproof, not weatherresistant.

Don't let the above get you down if you want a cool, pretty card! By all means, invest in some and send them to casual contacts who earn your favor. But it's a silly idea to send an expensive, photo-quality, two-sided card to someone who probably won't even look at it for more than the second it takes to cross-reference the QSO data with his log. Besides, you can spiff up a card like I'm describing, making it your own, without going overboard.

Now we've got the mechanics of the card itself established, let's make sure the QSO info is correct.

Print the information legibly. Fill out a dummy card and take it to the next club meeting. Pass it around to everyone, including the nearly-blind guy at the back. If anyone has a problem reading the information you're written, you have some options - practice your penmanship, use a typewriter or print a label (with permanent ink!).

Make sure the date, time and frequency are correct. Most logging programs will automatically update the UTC date when it changes at your location, provided you've set up the logging program correctly. If you're using paper logs, make sure you remember to update the date when the UTC clock flips from 2359 to 0000, or your card will get bounced as "not in log." Use a recognizable format for dating the QSO. 11.10.07 can be either 10th November or 11th October, so avoid it. In the past, it was de rigeur to use a Roman numeral for the month - 11 X 2007 - and that's the way I still do it. Saves writing "OCT" on the card, and there's no confusion as to what the abbreviation means - remember, odds are your card is going to a foreign country where English isn't the everyday language, and they've probably got different words for the months. Simply put, don't make the DX op or QSL manager guess, or you might end up in the "WIGATI" pile.

If you make an error, don't even try to make corrections. Bin the card and begin again. It's unethical to ask for an error-free card if the one you're providing is valueless - and corrected cards are valueless for awards. You never know; you might be Q13FZ's last county for a County-Hunter award. VP2ML advises, "Ask yourself if you would submit the card for your own DXCC; if it isn't good enough for you, it should be discarded."

Okay, now we've got a legible, durable card ready to send. How do we get it there, and how do we best get a response?

The first question to ask now is "Where do I send it?" As recently as ten years ago, this step could be an incredible chore. With the advent of the World Wide Web, it's at the other end of your modem. http://www.qrz.com has lots of DX callsign info, including managers. There are gaps, however. Google "dx qsl route" and you'll come up with lots of search ideas; be diligent, and you'll find the best route. If you're reading this on the Internet, you can do this. If you're reading this in a print newsletter because you don't have a computer, get one, you Luddite. You're supposed to be a communications expert, fer Pete's sake, and the Internet is the 21st century's dominant communications medium. Go get a Macintosh or hit your local public library.

Once you have an address, you have three avenues of delivery available to you: direct, manager or Bureau.

Sending and receiving cards via the Bureau is easy. QSL Bureaux are usually run by the national amateur radio associations of each country (in the USA, ARRL). They send and receive bulk mailings of QSL cards between them, sort them when they arrive, and send them on to individual amateurs. Pros: it's easy and cheap. Cons: it's slooooow, and some countries don't have a Bureau. See http://www.arrl.org/qsl/qslin.html for US information.

Managers are marginally more complicated. Instead of sending the card in a package to a QSL Bureau, you send it, with SASE, through USPS to a domestic QSL manager. Just like sending a domestic QSL direct. (Yes, I know there are overseas managers; give me a moment, will ya?)

Direct is consdierably more complicated, as there are quite a few things to be considered.

First, how to package. You need two envelopes, one outer and one for return, both addressed correctly. It is best to get the clearly marked "Airmail" envelopes with the colored borders. You can get away with marking the envelopes "Via Air" and/or "Par Avion" - it's worked for me - but better to use the universally-recognized airmail packaging. Make sure the return envelope "nests" neatly inside the outer; folding is to be avoided, as it leaves a tell-tale bulge. Oh, and don't be a bonehead like I was once - buy return envelopes that actually fit a QSL card. Yeah; really happened. If you must fold your SASE, put the fold at the bottom of the outer envelope, so as to avoid having it sliced in half when the outer envelope is opened.

Airmail supplies are available from various sources. I've used K3FN and can attest to both his service and the quality of his products - visit http://users.net1plus.com/ryoung/index.htm and have a look round. If you use IRCs, make sure they're A. the new kind, not the outdated ones; and B. properly stamped. IRCs should be stamped on the left side only. If both sides are stamped, it's cancelled and therefore worthless. There is a centre box, which may be stamped, but only to indicate the price of the IRC; if it gets a postmark stamp, explain the error to the postal employee and refuse to take it. Not only must it be stamped in the proper place, but the date of issue must be legibly shown. If the stamp is smudged, ask for another.

Write your mailing address in the center of the return envelope. Note: Never, ever put any callsigns anywhere on the outside of either envelope! This is the quickest way to get your envelope opened and searched for currency by unscrupulous postal workers; the remnants will be tossed into the nearest rubbish bin. If you can manage it, use a business address for your address on both envelopes. This discourages curiosity in the dishonest. Of course, you'll have to arrange with someone to recognize that any airmail coming from East Jibip is supposed to go to you.

Now, some QSL managers are in foreign countries, too. Your hope is that the manager is in a country with a better postal system than East Jibip. Let's say Q13FZ has a QSL manager in the capable person of DF4XX - good, he's in Germany. Overseas, yeah, but in the land of efficiency and management, where alles is normally in Ordnung. If Q13FZ is managed by someone in Lesotho, it might be time to worry. I haven't got a solution for that, other than what you've already read.

Finally, be patient. Regardless of whether you're going direct, buro or manager, recognize that mail is a funny thing is some foreign lands. Your direct card might take weeks to arrive. The DX op is a hobbyist, too, and might take a couple days/weeks to fill out the response. After being posted, the response might take a few weeks to filter through his postal system. Then it sits on a boat for several weeks, steaming toward our shores. Only then does it get launched into our wonderful US Postal Service (sarcasm /off). So even direct might take three to six months.

Add in variables like QSL Bureaux - which are staffed by hobbyist volunteers, taking away from their on-air time to sort your cheap-ass QSL, tightwad - and you can tack on at least six months. Same thing with managers, really: the manager might not get logs but once or twice a year, via the sloooooow postal service of some third-world country. Same thing with DXpeditions, too: I can't think of a single big-time DXpedition in the last three years that even made an attempt to print cards until months after they all got home and had a shower.

So relax, have a beer, and work more DX. It's a cycle. The more DX you work, the more QSLs you'll send, the more rare the stations you send cards to, and the longer you wait. Get over it! =)

Permission to reprint this article in your club's newsletter is hereby given, provided proper credit is given. If it's a paper newsletter, snail mail me a copy so I can bask in my own glory - look me up on QRZ.com!

Playing around

2007-01-27T13:49:00.000Z

I've been playing with QSL designs. Here's one at right. Pretty spffiy, huh? I'll post some more as I fiddle with them.

New callsigns always breed new QSL designs! At left is another I just ginned up, based on an English QSL from the 1930s.
Ain't Photoshop wonderful? Depending on how bored I get this weekend, there may be more.

You know, it occurs to me I could be spending this time on the air. Maybe I'll biff off to the ham shack and tune around. I see some interesting activity on the DXCluster, especially on 20 meters...

Upgrade!

2007-01-27T13:26:00.000Z

It's been quite a while since I've updated this blog. Really, that's because I've had little of interest to write.

That changed on 23 January 2007, when FCC issued my new callsign! That's right, kids - I'm now AB3EI, a freshly-approved Amateur Extra operator.

Took me long enough to actually take the bloody test. I got my General waaaay back in 1993. That sufficed for years, working occasional DX and the odd contest. But I recently got a taste of fairly intense operating at N3MX's well-equipped station in the 2006 CQ Worldwide DX contest, operating multi-single with N3MX and K3YD. I decided I had to step up to the plate and get it done.

Yeah, I got it too late to brag about 20 words-per-minute CW qualification, but I really don't care; I've been operating at that speed and faster as a General for years, so bite me.

DLARC's VE team administered the test the first Friday in January. Didn't take me long to complete it - I figure, you know what you know, and if you don't know something, sitting there and staring at the test sheet ain't gonna make you magically remember it. So take your best guess and move on. I don't know exactly how well I did, but it doesn't matter - I passed.

Took me all of fifteen minutes, if that. Lots of study, using ARRL's license manual, and lots of online practice tests (I used eHam.net and QRZ.com) made for a relatively easy time of it. I'm rather proud to say I didn't just memorize the answers. It's a point of pride that my calculator actually got a workout. (Yeah, I know; you had to use a sliderule in knee-deep snow while copying 45wpm CW in your head. Just stow it, will ya?)

I didn't even wait for the info to post on FCC's website. I ran home and flipped the switch, snagged an LX station on 20 meters - deep in the Extra phone sub-band. The next weekend, I operated the DLARC club station in the NAQP CW test for a few hours.

And I used Extra freqs. Sweet.

Chapter 10

2006-05-14T17:54:00.000Z

There's a reason why I'm blogging instead of playing on the radio. It's because every damned frequency I have the equipment to use is utterly devoid of use.

I got up at about 0730 and immediately headed to the shack. Flipping the Tempo onto 75m, I gave the knob a twirl, hoping to hear at least one "CQ MAQP". Instead, all I heard was old men rambling on and on about things which I suppose were very important to them.

As an aside, I cannot even remember what they were droning about; it probably had something to do with how quickly or slowly they were dying. I mean, I'm all for ragchewing - I do it all the time on the Marconi Net on 3872 kHz - but this gives new meaning to the idea that amateur radio is a dying hobby! Sheesh!

Anyway, I made two contacts in four hours, both on 20m, neither in the Mid-Atlantic (one in FL, the other in GA). Conditions are absolutely terrible; a few Europeans were heard about 1000 EST, but no one else. I wanted to work 40m, but the Tempo is still inop on that band.

I am terribly disappointed. I wanted like nothing else to get on the air and make contacts. 75m was full of blahblahblah, and 20m was dead. I wish I had 40m, but I can't figure out the problem. I'll try again this afternoon, I guess.

Chapter 9

2006-05-14T17:03:00.000Z

Now it's the Thursday before MAQP weekend. I'm at work until 9PM. I think everything's okay, even when the storm blows in. Wind, rain, thunderbolts and lightning, very, very frightening. When I arrived at home, the weather was so foul that I merely ran into the house without looking up.

Imagine my surprise when I took the dogs out Friday morning, and found the dipole in a puddle.

Turns out the wire I soldered to the twinlead to make the 75m side of the dipole had broken right at the joint.

Woe! Calamity! Horror!

No problem. I'll just solder it back together; that'll get me through the weekend. Plus, I've got all morning, because Friday I don't have to be in the office until 1PM.

I just soldered it back together, and proceeded to string it back up. As I was hoisting it back up, I sensed resistance; thinking it was just a kink in the rope, I gave it a yank.

Snap!

Damn! Same break, just on the other side. Utterly furious, I spool up the extra wire and toss it into the summer kitchen.

It's now 10:30AM. I know I'm not going to have time tonight to pull something together. It's now or never.

Out comes the remains of the polyethylene cutting board. A few quick cuts with the jigsaw later, I have five rectangular bits of plastic. I drilled enough holes to fit rope, wire, and a spare panel-mount SO-239 connector, so that I had a center insulator and four "end" insulators. 120' of wire and a few stainless bits, and it was finished.

By 12:05, it was up. I had already been on and off the roof, attached one end to the chimney, and tossed the other end into the walnut tree. I had about thirty seconds to test it.

The doublet loaded okay, though it wasn't as good as I thought it'd be. I had had to fold over a piece on each end to make it fit the available space, and that was playing merry hell with the thing.

Gotta leave it for now. Maybe I can catch up with it Sunday morning...

Chapter 8

2006-05-14T16:47:00.000Z

So a few weeks ago, I start making preparations for the Mid-Atlantic QSO Party on Mother's Day weekend. I downloaded a new piece of software - WB3W's MAQP software, found at http://www.wb3w.net/wb3wlogs_MAQP.htm - set it up, and played with it a bit. Some testing of the station was done, making QSOs on 75m and 20m.

The dipole was moved from directly over the summer kitchen to between the main house's chimney and one of the tall walnut trees behind the carriage house. Finally it had dawned on me why the parallel dipole never really loaded on 20m - with its proximity to the summer kitchen's galvanized metal roof, the dipole's loading when completely wonky. Now the 20m dipole worked (after a fashion). The first contact made with the repositioned dipole was Ukraine, a 59 USB report with about 90 watts.

The vertical still works better, though; I made a few side-by-side comparisons, and the vertical just gets out better. The dipole is better on receive, being slightly more quiet.

Now it's a matter of waiting a few weeks for the MAQP to begin.

Chapter 7

2006-04-25T15:57:00.000Z

25 April 2006

I have no idea why this stupid blogger won't let me put things in order by date. That's what I get for not inputting the info on the date desired, I guess.

Well, now I've kind of got everything set up, and you can read the continuing saga of Rebuilding N3OYA here instead of waiting for me to upload HTML.

So, on with the ramblings.

As you've probably read on the main site, the station is being rebuilt. I used to run a Yaesu FT-840, an MFJ-949 manual antenna tuner, and a ladderline-fed doublet. Pretty standard fare for the new young radio amateur, really.

A few years ago, shortly after Kass and I married, I sold off everything but my old 2-meter handheld FM transceiver. After all, we lived in an apartment. I lacked space to erect antennas, I couldn't get a decent ground (we were on the upper floors, and there was PVC between the station and ground in all the water pipes).

Chapter 6

2006-04-25T15:42:00.002Z

16 April 2006 - Happy Easter!

N3OYA is now on 20m fer sure! I made myself a vertical.

You know those green (or blue) plastic tarps you can get for picnics or your backyard? They've got aluminum poles for support. Each section is about four feet long. I started sticking sections together until I got longer than 16.5 feet, screwed them together with self-tapping sheet-metal screws, and cut off the rest.

The feedpoint is about six inches above the ground, and is comprised of a wooden dowel stuck a good two feet up into the mast and a good six inches into the base section. Sheet-metal screws hold it all together.

It loads effortlessly all over the 20m band. I tried like hell to make a contact with it, but 20m has been deader than a very dead thing all day. I heard - dimly - EA8/DL6FAW around dusk, but he went QRT thirty seconds after I found him. I heard a few other stations, including another 6Y5, but all everyone was talking about was how crappy the band was. Even the Maritime Mobile Net on 14.300 was dead; maybe one or two stations.

But tomorrow is another day! Well, Tuesday is another day; I'm working twelve hours tomorrow.

Chapter 5

2006-04-25T15:42:00.001Z

12 April 2006

The weather held. My new parallel dipole is up! I have a voice on 75m. I'm not very loud, but I'm getting into Maine, so something's going right.

The dipole is only about 30' up. That means my 75m signal is NVIS (Near-Vertical Incidence Skywave), but I'm getting out to the Mid-Atlantic and New England. Good enough for now.

For some reason, 20m isn't working worth a damn. For the life of me, I cannot figure out why. I've pulled the antenna down and trimmed it - mathematically, it was about four inches too long, I discovered - with no effect. Oh, well. That's leaves another antenna project in my future. In the meantime, I can use 75.

Chapter 4

2006-04-25T15:42:00.000Z

9 April 2006

Melody, Sebastian and I are coping. Not thriving, but coping. I cannot believe how much I miss my sweetie. I know it knocks my Manliness Factor down about ten pips, but there it is.

As a method of keeping busy, I decided to make a new antenna for my Tempo to feed.

A cruise through the Junque Box revealed a bunch of 300-ohm TV twinlead from some forgotten project and a surfeit of 18-ga stranded bare wire. A cruise through my old ham radio magazines - and my 1994-vintage RSBG handbook - told me to build a parallel dipole for 75 and 20.

I cut two lengths of the twinlead to make a half-wave on 14.2MHz. One end was shorted; this end attaches to the center insulator. One wire on each twinlead section was then attached to enough 18-ga copper wire to make up the legs of the 75m doublet (cut for 3.9MHz).

A trip to the shopping center gleaned the rest. From Home Depot came some stainless steel bolts, nuts, and washers, as well as four 3/4" PVC couplers for end insulators. Total: $5.57, including tax.

From K-Mart came a polyethylene cutting board. Martha Stewart's gonna be ticked, but that cutting board - which cost me $4.23, by the way - not only made the center insulator, it also will make a couple more.

The most expensive bit was the coax. I was forced to go to Radio Shack for it, because it was Sunday and all the radio shops were closed. The truck stops around here carry coax for far lower cost than RS, but it only comes in 18' lengths, maximum. I bought 100 feet, and it was just enough.

The rest was just cable ties and solder. It went together without a hitch, but I didn't get a chance to string it up. Dammit!

Chapter 3

2006-04-25T15:41:00.001Z

Today I put Kass on a plane to Australia. She'll be gone for about a month. I don't know how I'm going to get through it all, but I'll muddle through, I guess. It's going to be tough. I dropped her off at JFK this afternoon, and thank God I had the 2m rig in the truck, or I would never have made it home through Long Island; sheer boredom would have done me in.

Chapter 2

2006-04-25T15:41:00.000Z

2 April 2006

...And there it sat until today. Today I actually set the thing up and flipped the switch. The antenna I used is an interesting story.

Antenna gurus note: The following is not for the faint of heart! Do not crucify N3OYA for the following idiocy!

It was a beautiful day, not too warm, but clear skies. So I started rooting through my Junque Boxe for bits to make an antenna. I know in my heart that no antenna installed on a nice day could ever possibly work, but I had to try. The Tempo was sitting there, big knob staring at me like a baleful eye. The radio Tiki god must be placated!

So I found an old center insulator with integral balun I had stashed for a rainy day (or, as it happens, a sunny antenna-type day). It was an old Army-surplus device; we used to call it a "cobra-head", because that's what it looks like. It even had about twelve feet of RG-58 attached to it, complete with soldered PL-259.

Now, any idiot can tell you that twelve feet of feedline does not a good antenna make. But unless I used the 100' or so of RG-11 I managed to skive off the cable installer ("C'mon, man. It's the end of the roll. What use is it to you?" "Okay. Here." Cha-ching!), I was stuck with it. And I didn't want to marry myself to an antenna; I just wanted something with which to listen to my really old, really beat up radio.

I cut a 20m dipole, since I figured 80m would be too big a pain in the ass - I mean, too complicated an installation to temporary use. Here's where it gets interesting.

The elements were cut for 14.2 MHz (because I had that much wire left over from installing a couple of ceiling lamps in the foyer and dining room). I didn't have any end insulators, but that wasn't important, because I didn't have anything to hang the doublet from. A quick inspection of the front porch, though, showed me the way.

Apparently one of the previous owners of our house had a liking for those rattan (bamboo?) Venetian blinds, because there were small hooks screwed into the ceiling above the handrails every few feet. Not an ideal thing to hang antennas from, but the thing wasn't going to radiate, was it? The elements were hung along those hooks, and the ends tied off to the posts at the ends of the porch. Yes, tied off.

So I fire up the radio and hook up the antenna. Nice loud signals on 20m. I tuned around for a while, listened to a few QSOs, even copied some CW on the low end of the band. (For the record, my CW skills now suck. It's embarrassing.)

Then I heard it - a 6Y5 calling CQ. Yeah, I know it's only Jamaica, but I haven't worked any DX in five years. FIVE YEARS. So I grab the user's manual (What the hell does "Plate/Load" mean again?), flip a few switches, twiddle a few knobs, and toss "N3OYA, Oscar Yankee Alpha" into the fray. A blink later, I heard exactly what I expected.

"W5, the W5 give me your suffix again? W5 Romeo something, go."

Being the wire antenna little pistol I was, this was not only not discouraging, it had a semblance of normalcy. I was serene. That is, until I remembered I didn't have two VFOs anymore. Hope he doesn't decide to go split. Please, God, keep him on one frequency.

God and the Most Wanted List smiled on me. Jamaica is on the Top 100 list of "DX you're most likely to work," so there wasn't a great big market for the 6Y5 at 1300EDT. I kept calling, and finally got through. Not bad; first in the log at my new QTH, and it's DX!

While I was finishing patting myself on the back, my wife came in the room. "What's the smell?" she asked.

"Dunno," I replied. "I just worked a 6Y5!"

"Is it contagious?"

In the excitement, I had forgotten that I had pretty much dropped the hobby before we started dating, and she had absolutely no idea what I was preening about.

So I started walking through the house looking for something burning. Nothing in the kitchen, which by the by is at the back of the house. Strong aroma of cooked plastic at the front of the house. Strongest smell in the dining room, where the Tempo was (still is) set up.

A thorough inspection of the precious radio revealed neither visible damage nor the locus of the offending odor. Whew. But right behind it was the barely-cracked-open window, through which snaked the RG-58.

Curious, I sallied forth to the front porch, where I saw what remained of the cobra-head.

Whoops.

See, I forgot that the cobra-head was only rated for 50 watts. When I was trying to retrain myself how to tune the Tempo's transmitter, I was cranking 150-plus watts of cure CW tone into the balun. Poor little thing just couldn't stand the strain and gave up the ghost.

It still heard okay, though. A new antenna would have to wait for a little while, though; because I'm even more broke than normal.

Chapter 1

2006-04-25T15:40:00.000Z

Today I went back to Mom & Dad's place in central Pennsylvania. Just a day trip to get some of the massive amount of junk I've stored in their basement since I finally flew the nest some years ago. I didn't get all of it - I've only got one full-size pickup truck, you know - but I got a good bit of it, including all of my old ham radio magazines from when I was really active in the mid-to-late 90s.

And for once, I had a flash of foresight. Since I knew I was coming into the area, I sent an email to my oldest and dearest pal. I had loaned Roy, KB3CZD, my very old Henry Tempo One (also known as Yaesu's FT-200 or Sommerkamp FT-250). Works 80, 40, 20, 15, and 10.

Well, at least it's supposed to work those bands. Roy informed me that 40m was still on the fritz; I was hoping he'd get someone to sort that out so he could sell it. Maybe that's why I only paid $50 for it at a hamfest about ten years ago.

Anyway, I collected the Tempo One and power supply/speaker from Roy and his lovely wife, and booked on home. Once I got there, it was reverently placed on a table in the living room, still in its tattered cardboard box...