Late Night Posts

These late night posts are killing me! I should be in bed; but I'm not, so .........

After watching "Monk", I headed down to the basement shack for a bit of operating. Being in the basement when it's 22 Degrees outside is not the most fun thing in the world. I don't have a thermometer down there; but if I had to guess, I would say it's about 63 Degrees or so down there. If I stay too long; the arthritis in my hands starts to act up and they begin to feel like a giant toothache. But, I digress .........

After "Monk", I settled in for a few QSOs. One was of particular interest. Bob K8CCG answered my CQ on 80 Meters, right in the vicinity of the QRP "watering hole" of 3.560 MHz. Bob lives in Muskegon, Michigan and he was using a home brewed transmitter. Bob was putting out 500 mW (1/2 a Watt) to a dipole. He had a very good 569 signal into New Jersey which actually peaked up at 589 when the QSB would go away. Bob had a very tiny bit of chirp on his signal which was not objectionable at all; but still was not a perfect tone note. I'm definitely no radio Einstein; but I think that Bob was suffering from some kind of parasitic oscillations in the oscillator section of his transmitter. He was monitoring his own signal; so he actually informed me about them.

I hear guys like Bob, putting their own home designed and built equipment on the air; and I just give out a heavy sigh! I wish I was talented and knowledgeable to do stuff like that. Maybe this year I should concentrate on building a few simple items from scratch instead of concentrating on kits. I do have a Tuna Tin 2 to build; and I ordered all the parts I need from Mouser to homebrew a 40 Meter receiver. Not my own design; but it will be my own construction from scratch. I guess everybody's got to start somewhere ..... right?

73 de Larry W2LJ