[SECC] This Little Pistol responds

[Scott Straw]

“...(They) know very little about take off angles and wonder why DX
is so hard to work with a G5RV at 30 ft. They might never have used a VOM,
do not know what common mode current is let alone know how to reduce it,
and think RG8X is a perfectly fine feed line for most anything...”

Hello, my name is Scott and I am Little Pistol.  Actually I’m more of a cap gun.  I have a Yaesu FT-450D, a MFJ-939, and a G5RV.  I have been pretending to be a contester for a long time but with a busy life, a poor station,  and a job that requires a lot of travel (pre-COVID), I am a living, breathing, walking example of Hiram Percy’s Maxim - 

“The number of conflicts to operating in, and interruptions during, a contest is directly proportional to the operator’s interest in participation.”  

When I can only make a few dozen or a maybe a hundred contacts, can’t really run at a competitive rate (when I do try, I usually get run off my frequency), and have to enter the “Unlimited” class to do an assisted S&P, getting excited about a contest is difficult.

Those whiny statements aside, I still enjoy competitive radio events and feel like if I were on a M/M team at a station with a good TB & Wires setup (or better) I could be a legitimate contributing operator.

Along the way I could learn about take off angles, a VOM, Common Mode Current, how to use the Grey line to my advantage, and what to replace my RG8X with.  I may always have a just a G5RV, but maybe I learn to use it better, how to make simple modifications to improve it, or ways to build mono-band antennas that could replace it while maintaining the same general footprint and CCR required stealth.

Those lessons are best learned over a cup of coffee or a bottle of Nehi, not in a Hamfest Forum (remember the good old days?) or a analog information delivery device (a book).

I’m now going to slink off to the back corner and let the “big guns” with the “big gums” tell me how it’s done “the right way” and how if you don’t have a 220VAC service drop in your shack, you’re just a pretender...

Scott Straw, KB4KBS
Roswell, Georgia USA
(EM74tb)