The response from the QSO Today listener survey was terrific. Almost all of you who answered my survey entered the drawing by giving me your call sign. I assigned each record in the survey that contained a call sign a line number, set the range in an on-line random number generator and pushed the button. I got this idea from Cale at the HamRadio 360 Podcast. Great idea Cale! The winner of the drawing was Mervin Northover, M0MIN, in the UK, who now has his prize.
While the survey was insightful, you were also very generous with your guest suggestions. Most of your QSO Today guest suggestions were new names and call signs to me, many of whom I had never heard of. I entered all of your suggested guests into my prospect list. I go through a few each day, complete the record and send invitations. I expect that we will have some great future guests on the podcast.
I purchased my plane ticket and made reservations for my first Dayton Hamfest. I hope to meet many of the QSO Today listeners at the show. I also plan to attend the FDIM conference. What I learned is that the Fairborn hotels are the closest hotels to the new Hamvention site in Xenia. As a result, hotel rooms disappeared quickly right after New Year’s, possibly impacting the folks that would go to FDIM. So if you are planning Dayton this year, now is the time to make preparations.
My QSO Today is with Mike Myers, VA3MPM, who is an active ham in the city of Ottawa, Canada. Mike likes to collect old transceivers, the ones that many of us wanted as kids, in the seventies, but out of our financial reach at the time. He likes the early Drake, Swan, Yaesu, and Kenwood transceivers that he finds at hamfests for very little money. Mike says that most of these rigs will work with a little clean up and maybe replacement of all of the electrolytic capacitors. In the end, he has some very interesting rigs where each one gives him a different on-air user experience.
Some new hams to the QSO Today podcast tell me that the cost of a ham rig can be expensive and a barrier to getting on the air. These older rigs (under the careful scrutiny of an Elmer) can be a great opportunity to get on the air for a fraction of the cost of a new rig. With a little more help, you can add some SDR (Software Defined Radio) capability to give these rigs some interesting new capability (See QST Magazine, Jan 2017, Modulation-Demodulation Software Radio, by Alex Schwarz, P. 50).
For me these QSO Today conversations stimulate some new thinking. I hope that they do the same for you.
73, Eric 4Z1UG
While the survey was insightful, you were also very generous with your guest suggestions. Most of your QSO Today guest suggestions were new names and call signs to me, many of whom I had never heard of. I entered all of your suggested guests into my prospect list. I go through a few each day, complete the record and send invitations. I expect that we will have some great future guests on the podcast.
I purchased my plane ticket and made reservations for my first Dayton Hamfest. I hope to meet many of the QSO Today listeners at the show. I also plan to attend the FDIM conference. What I learned is that the Fairborn hotels are the closest hotels to the new Hamvention site in Xenia. As a result, hotel rooms disappeared quickly right after New Year’s, possibly impacting the folks that would go to FDIM. So if you are planning Dayton this year, now is the time to make preparations.
My QSO Today is with Mike Myers, VA3MPM, who is an active ham in the city of Ottawa, Canada. Mike likes to collect old transceivers, the ones that many of us wanted as kids, in the seventies, but out of our financial reach at the time. He likes the early Drake, Swan, Yaesu, and Kenwood transceivers that he finds at hamfests for very little money. Mike says that most of these rigs will work with a little clean up and maybe replacement of all of the electrolytic capacitors. In the end, he has some very interesting rigs where each one gives him a different on-air user experience.
Some new hams to the QSO Today podcast tell me that the cost of a ham rig can be expensive and a barrier to getting on the air. These older rigs (under the careful scrutiny of an Elmer) can be a great opportunity to get on the air for a fraction of the cost of a new rig. With a little more help, you can add some SDR (Software Defined Radio) capability to give these rigs some interesting new capability (See QST Magazine, Jan 2017, Modulation-Demodulation Software Radio, by Alex Schwarz, P. 50).
For me these QSO Today conversations stimulate some new thinking. I hope that they do the same for you.
73, Eric 4Z1UG
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