12 year old can teach us a lesson!

Our son Matthew ran across this excellent video, and put it on Facebook. It's a 12-year-old girl who delivers an inspiring message. Figured it was worth passing on... and maybe learn from...

Great Video... Great Music...

If you don't have this album, get it and enjoy the video and CD... Did I say "album"... yikes! That's certainly going to date me! It's actually a DVD/CD combo from a few years ago.

Upgrading to Windows 7... a journey!

Recently I decided that the "kids" computer, with Windows 7, would become my new home computer. It's an Acer, with gobs of hard drive space, more memory and features and is very fast. It took awhile, but we finally got it all to work. 

However, my various ham radio contesting and logging programs wouldn't work with Windows 7, so I had to get a new program. But that was actually a good thing as I now have logging, DX cluster, contest logging, and DXCC all on one screen (see photo). It's similar to the famous CT program, but works on Windows 7 and has many more features, plus the new computer is much faster than the old Dell with XP.

The new program is WinTest: http://www.win-test.com/ 

Thanks to our son Matthew for helping me get this program and everything else working properly!

Ham Radio From The Past...

This should bring a smile to anyone who played around with radios back in the "good old days"...

I received this today via email. It's a page from a 1960 issue of Electronics Illustrated showing a home-made, 4-tube transmitter/receiver project.

This is the "stuff" that we did as kids back in the mid-20th century and, amazingly, a simple set like this could communicate all over the world.

(Click on the photos for 
an enlarged view)

Pictured below is a 3-tube set that I made back in the mid-1960's. It had three tubes (6L6 transmitter, 6SN7 receiver and 5U4 power supply), and fit in the attache' case shown in the photo.

Home-made Transmitter... WOW!

What we have here is a beautiful example of a home-made transmitter. As you can see from the photos, the ham (unknown) who built this was a true craftsman. He even made the chassis and formed the mesh cabinet!

The transmitter uses one tube (a 6L6) and puts out about 10 watts on the 80 and 40 meter ham bands.

The workmanship is beautiful inside and out.

I can't imagine how many hours were spent creating this little gem, but I greatly admire the person who has this kind of skill and patience!

Click on photos

to see them enlarged.

K6CU Featured in CQ Magazine!
The March issue of CQ magazine had a nice little write-up on my "vintage" station (top photo above). This was part of the "How It Works" column, written by Dave Ingram for the past 30 years.

The equipment shown in the photo is from the 50's (the receiver) and the 60's (transmitter). Both units work very well, and are in very nice condition. I had a schedule with Dave to have a contact using this set-up, but conditions were not good enough to work him on the east coast.

Sadly, this is the last column Dave (K4TWJ) wrote as he passed away on January 20. I had spoken with and emailed Dave several times over the years.

To read the text, click on the image for a larger view.

Cincy In The Wintertime...

For the past 13 years I've traveled to Cincinnati, Ohio for the annual V-Twin motorcycle expo. Sometimes the weather is very nice, and sometimes not so much. Last week at the show the weather was bit on the cool side (highs of 18 degrees) with SNOW!

Pictured above is the view in front of Applebee's restaurant, where we had dinner on Friday night. This was the start of a snowstorm that dumped about 6 inches on us.

This is not the nice soft "throwing a snowball" kind of snow. It's icy, crusty and hard as a rock, which makes walking and driving a challenge. I'm glad to be home!