Sunday, July 25, 2010




IS EBAY YOUR ONLY SOURCE?

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The answer is "of course not". While it's true, if you want to get the best price (as a seller), or find that oddball oldie that you've been pining away for, EBAY is number one. As a seller, you "give" EBAY about 9% of the total sale price, and then Paypal takes about 4% of what is left over. EBAY has a feedback system which should give you warm fuzzies when buying from someone but I've been ripped off at least a dozen times from people with good feedback.
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There are other HAM (and CB) related websites that offer free postings, and as a seller, you benefit from keeping that 9% while still being able to accept Paypal. It's a bit more risky when you are the buyer because you are making your purchase decision by the description/picture of the item, and faith that the HAM won't rip you off. It's a tough decision as a buyer, especially when your talking big bux ($1,000+) and a no-brainer for the seller (no 9% EBAY payout), but you don't reach as many people as you would via EBAY.
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2m weekly nets. Yep, they're alive and doing well thank you, and locals are still listing what they want to buy, or to sell. It's a local sale, you get to check the equipment out, no surcharges or shipping, but it's an even smaller market share.
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Tailgate Meets. Ditto, ditto, and ditto. Unless power is available, you won't have the option to test it (faith-in-fellow-ham), and pricing isn't much better than EBAY because they've usually checked the site to see what their rig is fetching, and price it as such. I don't go to many of these any longer, but I listen to the repeater traffic and usually hear the same thing: "There was a good crowd, and some nice equipment, but it seemed like no one was buying much of anything". Too bad; I used to enjoy going to those.
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CRAIGSLIST. Occasionally you'll find CB and HAM gear listed on CRAIGSLIST in you locale. I've never bought nor sold anything from it, so I couldn't tell you how successful it is - have you?
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CB IS DEAD - LONG LIVE CB
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If you're a regular reader of my Blog you know very well that CB is not dead. Many people who got caught up in the CB "FAD" of the 70's have assumed that CB went the way of the "PET ROCK" but we know differently. Because licenses are no longer mandatory it's hard to keep track of the numbers, however if you look at the amount of CB Radios being sold each year it's easy to estimate several million users (and that's not including those who are still using their 20-30 year old rig!). This proves that Citizens Band Radio was not your typical "FAD" that fades out quickly, but an inexpensive means of communication that will be around for many decades to come. Long live Citizens Band Radio, 'Nuff Said.
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Woody


SUNSPOTS KEEP COMING
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It looks like we're slowly entering the next sunspot cycle as numbers continue to improve. Today's reading:
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Sunspot Number = 41
Flux = 83
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What this means to you - DX or "SKIP" conditions will become more frequent so those frequencies that have been somewhat dead in the last year (both HAM and CB) will start filling up as operators come out of the woodwork once they realize conditions are favorable.
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PICTURE REQUEST - GOING, GOING......

But not quite "GONE". If you have pictures of yourself, or shack from the 60's/70's during the CB boom and still would like to have them included in my book, please e-mail me.
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'Nuff Said,(and good dx to you)
Woody

Monday, July 19, 2010



ONE MAN'S BLOG POST ABOUT THE TS-2000 NOISE PROBLEM




[CLICK ON PHOTO]

Friday, July 16, 2010




MY TOP TEN PICKS OF: CB EQUIPMENT YOU'LL NEVER RUN OUT OF SEEING ON EBAY

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Sure, there's more than 10, but I tried to stick to things that were at least 30 years old, and most, but not all were bid up to unrealistic prices (as if they were "rare"). So here are my picks:


  1. Astatic D-104

  2. E.F. Johnson "Whiteface"

  3. Turner Plus 2

  4. Turner Plus 3

  5. Courier 23

  6. Lafayette HE-20

  7. E.F. Johnson 250 Anniversary Base

  8. Midland 23 channel AM Mobile's (any of 'em)

  9. CB SAMS

  10. Realistic TRC-30

Of the ten items listed, I think it's a tie between the D-104 and the CB-SAMS. The Astatics will always sell for more than they're actually worth, while the SAMS will linger until a law is passed banning the sale of paper items - there's just too many of them out there.

Friday, July 09, 2010



GET YER SUNGLASSES OUT......





SUNSPOT 1082 IS COMING 'ROUND TO EARTH'S SIDE

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[PICTURE FROM SPACEWEATHER.COM SITE]

Thursday, July 08, 2010




LIFE, DEATH, & PHOTOSHOP
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This past weekend I was up in Texarkana with Robin to attend the services and funeral of her Aunt Argie, who passed away early last week while fighting cancer at her in-home hospice care in Pearland. It was a quick attack, lasting less than a year, and the speed of her downward spiral took us all by surprise. It was just a week before that Robin had brought a cassette recorder down to capture some of her stories and early family memories on tape. We didn't know it would be our only recording.
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Robin and her mom drove up on Monday, while I stayed behind until late in the week. My mission: to scan and retouch as many photos of Argie as I could before the service. Partially due to my erratic scanner, and the age of the photographs, it could easily take two or three hours just to get one picture ready for printing (or presentation). If any of you have undertaken this type of restoration, you know that you spend a lot of time editing at 300-400%, then dropping down to 100% to make sure you got it right; then back up to pixel sized editing again, over and over.
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As I dropped down to normal viewing, from time-to-time I couldn't help but look at the picture, Argie (at various ages), her surroundings, and wonder about things like: "Was that her first puppy?", or a black and white Christmas photo taken in her teens as she holds her brand new folk guitar and thinking "What were her plans and dreams at that moment?", and so it went, right up to the last photo I had time to do before time itself ran out. I emailed the photos and left to join Robin.
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This week, I'm still scanning photos and doing the best I can to restore them, and eventually when I'm finished, I'd like to use a service from Walgreens photo that I've used before: a cloth-bound photo book - this one filled with pictures from Argie's life. And now that I've gone through this process I've promised myself to take a little longer when looking through someone else's photo book(s), because I've learned that if you take the time and really look you'll find, it's true what they say: that "Every picture tells a story....".
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P.S.- While away, I received an e-mail that said my oldest Son's wife lost her brother around the same time (no idea from what). I can't imagine what that would be like - I only have one brother, but I know that I wouldn't want to see him depart so soon.

Monday, July 05, 2010


TNX, MR. SUNSPOT
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I had a long road trip to make last week and I knew I'd have two choices of entertainment: My IPOD (which I couldn't find) and my rigs. The IPOD would have lost out in any case because: 10 meters was open, I had plenty of time, and my QRP rig was eager for some use.
In many cases, I didn't have to tune around to look for someone - I would just finish my contact, then sit there for a few minutes before someone else came along to call.
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Everything was stateside, and my goal was to make a QSO with a station that I heard (for the longest time) in Canada, but even after 30 minutes of driving and calling, it was not meant to be. I did get close, with a quickly fading conversation with Nebraska, and then everything else was just a little bit lower. At one point I even heard Brownsville and Amarillo Texas while trying to work the Canadian station. So... "TNX" to: Nebraska, Naperville Illinois, Iowa, Cleveland Ohio, Kentucky, and a couple other stations for making the drive quite enjoyable!
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73,
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Thursday, July 01, 2010


RANDOM NOTES.....
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By now you've all probably heard about the ICOM IC-706 being discontinued. Whatever stock remains - is "IT". By the same token, you'll find a lot of 706's coming up for sale or auction as some operators are taking this time to either get something else, or, start a bankroll for whatever replaces it. I've heard that the IC-7000 is the replacement (makes sense, as ICOM has slowly slid the price upwards in that last couple years making the monetary difference between the two not as great).
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I've owned several incarnations of the 706 so I wanted to make sure that if you were looking to pick up a used one, to know there were more than a couple versions. Many original 706's are still on-the-air, whether it be base or mobile and usually can be found for a good price. I may be incorrect (any 706 aficionado can email me for correction) but the biggest thing to know when buying the first model is that the finals (the same ones the Yaesu FT-100 has) were discontinued years ago, and while a few still lurk about - it can be a very expensive repair once you've jumped through hoops in finding them. If memory serves me right, they're in the $150-$300 price range depending on who is selling their dwindling supply. This isn't quite as bad as the FT-100, which had VHF-UHF from the get go, and the VHF-UHF finals are definetely nowhere to be found, unless you pick up another used FT-100 for parts.
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The ARRL has announced that they now have a FACEBOOK page, so I wonder if they'll supply additions to the game-for-the-inane - "Farmville" (like towers, antenna farms "Hey! so'n so needs helps raising his tower", etc.) Naturally, I'm joking about Farmville add-ons because it would be the low point of our hobby. I read an article in a popular PC magazine recently that really laid into the online game with a final thought that if Farmville people spent as much time doing REAL things as they did on Farmville chores (imaginary), they'd get a lot more real life items done with less roundtuit's. Another ARRL note: They have posted a complete report on new equipment on display at Dayton, in PDF format, which can be found HERE.
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"I knew I was poking a stick into a hornets nest..."
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HAM-LITE. I got quite a few emails regarding that post, so thank you! Some were concise, others funny, and few were...off the deep end, but I was expecting a variety of responses because I knew I was poking a stick into a hornets nest! Once again, tnx for the emails.
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READER MAIL. I'll have some reader mail posted soon, and several may have questions that you can answer (I couldn't, but someone can).
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73
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