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[TowerTalk] Cheap hams and CATV

To: TOWERTALK@contesting.com
Subject: [TowerTalk] Cheap hams and CATV
From: Cqtestk4xs@aol.com
Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2006 15:27:19 EDT
List-post: <mailto:towertalk@contesting.com>
I have read and heard this countless times and often in a "bragging"  manner!

Is this the image that we hams should be promoting?   Consider this:.de K7PUC
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
Whether or not we should promote this concept, it IS a fact.  Having  sold 
antenna/tower stuff pretty heavily over the last five or six years I can  tell 
you hams are cheap. The majority will nickel and dime stuff at  hamfests.
 
Recently I met with a big time contester who also buys and sells towers and  
we agreed on the cheap term to describe hams.  However, there is a  difference 
between being smart cheap and stupid cheap.  Smart cheap is a  guy who 
wrangles a 150 foot tower (in good shape) for pennies on a dollar from  someone 
who 
bought it ten years ago and never put it up.  Stupid cheap is a  guy who 
spends $1000 on a tower and antenna and then buys used unknown coax  hamfest.  
He 
spends all the effort and money to get a signal out and then  attenuates it 
with crappy coax.
 
I have a lot more respect for guy who builds a quality station with  
scavenged good stuff than I do for one who got it out of a box.  Isn't that  
what ham 
radio used to be when it first started?  Most of us can't build  our own 
xcvrs, but we sure can tinker with the antennas and towers.
 
Without being smart cheap, I couldn't have been able to build a world class  
superstation on a teacher's salary.
 
By the way, where to get the CATV?  I picked up close to a thousand  feet 
from the cable company in Sarasota, along with about the same amount of 1/4  
inch 
EHS, all for free.  I got 2000 feet from a guy who no longer needed it  and 
had gotten it for free.  Oh yeah, I actually paid $100 for two broken  spools 
of CATV stuff at a scrap metals dealer.  One had over 2000 feet and  the other 
had 1200 feet on it.  You would not believe the amount of free  Heliax I got 
in conjunction with scrap tower.
 
Granted it is harder now to get the scrap stuff, especially the Heliax  since 
the price of metals has gone up recently.  However, for enterprising  cheap 
ham, it's out there.
 
Bill K4XS
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