I am an old man now and probably don't have a clue when it comes to what the
youth of today would be interested in.
In 1954 I spent a week with a friend that had moved to another city and we
went to an amateur radio meeting where we played with 2 Gonset communicators
a block away from each other. I was enthralled. My friend had his General
and we spent a few days getting me up to 5 wpm on the code. I took the
novice test and went home with my novice license. KN6HSG!! Was I excited.
I bought the current ARRL hand book and built a 40/80 meter 5 watt 6ag7 cw
transmitter. My old boy scout master gave me a Hallicrafters S-53A receiver
and I was off and running. I couldn't seem to raise anyone on 80 meters
until I contacted a Ham in Colton, California which was 20 miles away. I
guess that I was very weak because he finally asked me to send over my phone
number. I few minuets later my mother came out to my bed room shack and
said that there was someone on the phone for me. He came over and fixed my
antenna for me and I later contacted a ham in Minnesota.
These were exciting times for me. I later dropped Amatuer Radio for girls
and only came back after I had forgotten what it was that I did with the
girls.
I now do a little SSB but spend most of my time listening to cw trying to
get my receive speed and nerve up to the point that I can go on line.
Are kids like me still out there or has it all passed?
73, John kc0yai
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Brown K9YC" <k9yc@audiosystemsgroup.com>
To: "Bob McGraw - K4TAX" <RMcGraw@Blomand.net>; "Discussion of Ten-Tec
Equipment" <tentec@contesting.com>
Sent: Saturday, April 19, 2008 11:14 AM
Subject: Re: [TenTec] Cheap cw rig
On Fri, 18 Apr 2008 17:54:09 -0500, Bob McGraw - K4TAX wrote:
Do we really think newcomers to ham radio will be interested in
a CW rig? I doubt it.
I guess Elecraft doesn't count? They've sold thousands of K1s and
KX1s, both of which are CW only. Haven't looked at serial numbers
for K2s lately, but a year ago it was more than 6,000. The base
radio is CW only -- you have to add a SSB board to work phone. And
if you go to the QRP program at Dayton next month, you'll see a lot
of CW-only rigs. Some of those are built and used by new hams. If
you listen sorta high in the CW bands, especially on 40 and 30,
you'll hear them (when they're not getting stepped on by RTTY
contesters who don't listen before they transmit).
And perhaps you haven't done much contesting or DX chasing lately,
where there is still plenty of interest in CW by new hams.
73,
Jim K9YC
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