Gear

1) Its ok to buy old gear at Hamfests. Do recommend testing before you purchase. Either bring a dummy load and SWR meter or visit the test booths at some of the larger Hamfests. Flip them a $20 and they will test the heck out of year prospective honey of a purchase.

2) When buying used HF gear my criteria: Does it have a digital readout on the VFO? Does it have WARC bands? Does it have a CW filter? Can I still find parts? Price? Do you trust this person enough to buy something with no warranty?

3) When buying an HT, or handie talky, for 2 meters and beyond, look for non NiCd batteries. NiCd have memory. Fore example, discharge them halfway before charge and next time you will have half battery life. NiMetalHydrides and newer type batteries don’t have this issue. Look for extra batteries for emergency use.

4) What the heck is a Ham? It’s not an acronym, its more like a pig. Like a hog of the airwaves. Not a pretty moniker, but it stuck. “SRI OM THOSE #&$!@ HAMS ARE JAMMING YOU." See http://www.arrl.org/whyham.html

5) For ease of use and weak signal reception in HF bands, it is hard to beat a resonant dipole.

6) It is ok to have 40 meter inverted vees with a 25 ft. apex height. See fig. 1 and 2 at end of this.

7) Wire antenna BalUns are designed for resonant situations. Only one mfg. Makes a BalUn that will tolerate the high SWR that occur 200 kHz or more off resonance.

8) That said, you will get good signal reports with a BalUn. Got 55 into Estonia with 100 watts into my attic mounted 20 meter inverted vee.

9) BalUn is an acronym and stands for Balanced (as in antenna with equal legs) and unbalanced as in coax. No Balun means you will probably have RF on the shield of your coax and slightly non-uniform radiation patterns.

10) When you get on the air some Hams take it upon themselves to pick apart your audio (how your voice sounds). Fact is, if they can hear your call letter and are talking to you, then you are probably sounding just fine!!

CW

11) What about CW. There are still CW operators out there. You will probably find more CQ called on CW than on voice. The even tolerate my poor fist.

12) CQ FISTS: Fists are an organization to promote CW, two way radio with morse code. They are parked on 58: 7.058, 3.5058, etc….

13) Everyone uses the double dash, =, BT as a universal punctuation mark. The = or BT separates thoughts, used like comma. The other popular punctuation marks in popularity are probably in order from most to least used are: question mark, the comma and the period. At first I did not like all these marks, but now I do.

14) Check the internet for CW QSO examples: http://www.netwalk.com/~fsv/CWguide.htm http://zs6ez.za.org/tutorial/cw-qso.htm

SWR

15) radiated power goes as E field squared. Square everything out and you will see that 3:1 still puts out a lot of power.

16) That said, many solid state rigs will not tolerate 3:1. That in mind, if you buy a new solid state rig ask for a deal on the tuner Hi Hi Hi.

17) Hi Hi Hi is the telegraphic laugh.

18) Vacuum tube finals have high output impedance, solid state finals have low impedance output. What this means: tube transmitters have built in output networks and can tolerate high SWR.

GMT

19) Greenwich mean time. Greenwich England is near zero longitude, thusly where time is referenced. 360/24 = 15 degrees. So, every 15 degrees of longitude id one hour. GMT is also called Zulu time or just Z. I prefer Z because it saves space on my QSL card. GMT is also known as coordinated universal time.

QSL cards

20) QSL, or to acknowledge receipt. Yes, do them. But you can print your own with an inexpensive ink jet printer and Microsoft word. Buy the Avery postage card paper, 8386. Install the Avery software, paste your photo and type call letter in to one file called Front.doc. Paste the address lines and checkboxes for Mode, Two Way Radio, Freq, Time. Name this file Back.doc. Now print all the fronts on the Avery paper. Then flip all the printed out fronts and feed them right side up (in HP printer) and print the backs. In an HP printer the paper rolls over as it feeds so the paper has to be fed in upside down. Try it on cheap paper first tell you get it dialed in, then stuff the Avery paper in one sheet at a time. Finally, after you have done it correctly on one Avery paper, feed a whole stack of them in.

Q signs

21) Links for Q signals are as follows: http://www.qsl.net/w5www/qcode.html and http://www.radioing.com/hamstart/q-signal.html The more common ones are QSL? Can you acknowledge receipt? ( hey dummy did you hear what I just said?). QSL without question mark or intonation in voice, I understand (yes you idiot I hear you loud and clear). QRT, stop sending or signing off (generally a reason follows like: QRT my dog just ate the power cord). QRS … please send at ___ wpm, QRS? Shall I send slower? QRM is Man made noise. QRN is Nature made noise, also called QRNancy by some. QSB? Are you experiencing fading. QSB without question mark or without intonation in voice: troubled by fading signal.

Links for New Hams

22) Here are some good links for new Hams, not a complete list by any means. http://www.radioing.com/hamstart/ and http://www.netwalk.com/~fsv/