V44KF

I am still out of a decent transceiver on the operating table. The Drake TR4CW is decent, but not decent enough for me to spend more than 15 minutes on the air chatting with my local ham radio buddies, during which time I have to touch up the dial and bring it back on frequency at least once, maybe twice. I agree with my ham radio neighbour that if I switch the radio on early it will be steady on frequency when I am ready, but I will also have a steady increase in paying for electricity which I am not using but for heating up a rig. That I do not agree is a wise thing to do. I am looking forward to the Kenwood TS940SAT being on the bench shortly, maybe for the long holiday weekend, so I can justify staying home and talking to some new friends on the other side of the world if we can find the propagation. On a long holiday weekend like this it would be extremely nice if we had a clubhouse where we could congregate and work some DX too. Club house as in the ham radio Society Head Quarter...

The TS940SAT is now outside awaiting pickup and subsequent maintenance. The hammer has failed to resuscitate the receiver on the last few attempts and I had no choice but to pronounce the T940SAT dead to ham radio. A couple days ago V44KO dropped by with his antenna checking devices, and that forced me to remove the Kenwood from the operating table and replace it with the Drake TR4CW . After a few minutes and antenna connector cleaning we had audio. If you had told me that after 10 years plus you could just take up a Drake transceiver, plug it into 240 volts ac, connect an antenna, and it would function just like today was the tomorrow of ten years ago, I would tell you "you got to be making joke", but that is the reality, and maybe someone can explain the "why" of it to me. So why did V44KO bring his modern antenna checking devices? I don't trust the built in Kenwood SWR meter 100%, but I am still guided by it. My old Heathkit HM-102 meter does not agree with ...