I again am puzzled about how we hams want to baby and pamper our things, our
radios. They are lots more rugged than we think, I guess, and it would be
better, I think, to just store the thing, whatever, and forget it. You likely
should change out the caps later, anyway, and if the tube goes bad by sitting,
I just say I doubt it.
We think we are buying stuff new when it comes in the factory sealed box. We
forget that many items, like my IC7800 was manufactured four or five years
before I got it brand new. The items we buy as new have been made (with parts
of unknown age), sat in factory storage, shipped in blazing hot condx, sat in
retailers storage in freezing condx (up North), and then mailed to us "as new"
where they are handled by many large monkeys who practice jump shots with them,
or just drop them. THEN, we open the box thinking our precious radio just
popped out of the assembly line and came to our hands on the wings of angels.
My IC-7800 blew its finals all by itself, as about 30% of them are doing, and
in warranty shipping it in the original two boxes, a UPS monkey dropped it and
bent up the rear BNC sockets. ICOM Bellevue fixed the sockets for about $350
and fixed the rest on warranty, gave me a new set of boxes, and tomorrow I will
open it to enjoy again, I hope. My point is that this radio has undergone
extensive bad handling, hot and cold condx, STORED FOR YEARS, and so on and
when I get it on the table, will look just like new and act same too, I hope.
Our precious stuff gets fully "tested" before we see it. It does not need
babying, coddling, run at reduced power to make the final tubes run longer, or
any of the other rather loonie things I hear people doing.... using more care
on the radio than their children. Wake up, a radio is just a thing. 73
Charles Harpole
k4vud@hotmail.com
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