As the original poster in this thread, I thank everyone for the
responses. It's good to see such a wide range of views, from "discard
after 6 months" to "keep them all."
For the record, I got those boxes of QSTs into the attic. Since it's
accessed only by steep, narrow, pull-down stairs it was a good workout.
(There has to be some kind of rope-and-pulley way to get them back
down.) My little spreadsheet has records of which issues are in which boxes.
A number of posts were especially relevant to me. Rick DJ0IP's (and Jim
AD6CW's) views on retirement... mine is imminent, and I always had
visions of sitting quietly in a comfortable armchair with a good reading
lamp and a cup of coffee, following Dave K8MN's approach: going through
QSTs, especially from the days when I got into the hobby (the mid-1950s)
and before. The Yasme DXpeditions, how (and why) to neutralize a 304TL,
Lew McCoy's ingenuity with old TV sets... But, as Rick and others asked,
is that realistic? Just considering amateur radio, our hobby moves on,
and I really should be learning about surface-mount stuff like the
brilliant homebrew-contest things I see in the NEW magazines. (I was an
avid home-brewer as a kid in the tube days but have never even worked
with transistors.) Beyond radio, I have several other time-consuming
hobbies that suggest a "don't know how I found time to work" retirement.
On the magazines' eventual disposal: One of my "kids" (a middle-aged
adult) has friends whose parents have passed away, and she's helped
clean out their houses. The friends can keep only a few small momentos,
so accumulations of the parents' lifetimes go to charities or (mostly)
the dump. Our small house is filled with things that reflect our
interests, but our kids don't share them. Thousands of books, my
boatanchors, antique-car parts... There's always Ebay, but our kids have
no idea whether a DX-100 or NOS Hudson steering wheel might be worth the
trouble. At present, I'm waffling between (1) intelligently disposing of
all this stuff gradually so it'll go to good homes and our kids won't be
burdened with its disposal, and (2) keeping it all because "you never
know when you'll want it" and when the time comes we won't care and the
kids can just rent a dumpster anyway. Of course if we ever decide to
MOVE, as Ron W3WN (and one of my local friends) did, difficult value
judgments will have to be made earlier. [Ron, I'll remember your
interest! We drive through (well, around) Pgh occasionally.]
We recently disposed of hundreds of National Geographic magazines...
such a wealth of information. As Carter K8VT reported with QSTs, We
could find nobody who would accept them as a gift. Fortunately we have
curbside recycling here.
That's it for now, guys. Thanks a bunch for your insights. Obviously
this matter has to be continually revisited as time goes on.
--
John K3GHH
_______________________________________________
TenTec mailing list
TenTec@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/tentec
|