I was sitting here in the shack listening on YOUTUBE to Lee Ritenour and Pat Martino play a song Lee wrote for Les Paul RIP, and St2AR pops up on the cluster calling CQ.
I click the spot. Usually I would turn on diversity and set up the probe antenna and all that, but the guy is SO LOUD he's running as high as -75 dBm. I flip on the amp (instant on, no tune, solid state), the antenna is automatically switched from my 40M 1/2 wave vertical to my full size 1/4 wave on 80M and give him a call simplex. I'm the first one in line and in an instant he is in the log. Very good operator.
The guy is about 66hz higher than the spot and completely out of my pass band so I use the Knob to tune him in. I really like the addition of this accessory to my armamentarium.
In less than 15 minutes he was gone. He apparently had moved up to 40M. Ham radio blitzkrieg (German for lightning war) and a new one in the log on 80M.I was reading a couple of old fuddy duddies on eham in the DX forum decrying all the new fangled gizmos bla bla bla old days bla bla bla ain't like it used to be bla bla bla. My first ham radio rig was a S-40B, a crystal controlled 6L6 and a knife switch to change between TX and RX. I had to turn down the RF gain switch the antenna and then turn on the transmitter before I could transmit, and then do the reverse to receive. In the old days I never would have heard this guy much less worked. 80M was about 1/2 inch long on the S-40B's dial.
Without the new days, I would have just finished listening to Lee and Pat play some bebop and headed off to bed, but then in the old days there wasn't any YOUTUBE. I got my license when I was 11 and I didn't have a clue who Lee and Pat were in those days, so I guess I would have just headed off to bed.
I like the new days much much better, and so does my logbook.
73
