New Hobbies

[ladypatriot]

I have discovered and fallen in love with 'altered books' which is basically scrapbooking taken to a more 'artsy' level. You can google 'altered books' for more information meanwhile here's a link (showing another person's work) that gives you an idea of what I'm talking about.


Jenny's Altered Books

I visited the link, and I can understand why you love it! Things like that appeal to me; taking something ordinary and making it something more than it was.

Thanks for sharing this hobby with us. It's certainly new to me...much like cloud watching was!

 

[PaddyMac]

Do you think the class was worth the time and cost? I'm a visual learner (don't tell me, show me); reading instruction manuals is painful. That is why YouTube tutorials is a blessing!

Check out lynda.com for online tutorials by good teachers. About $25 a month to watch all you can watch. If you only need to learn one program, you could watch them all in 1 or 2 months and then unsubscribe. They also have Excel and Numbers tutorials (which I just started watching as I know all the graphic programs but never learned how to use a spreadsheet).

 

[PaddyMac]

I visited the link, and I can understand why you love it! Things like that appeal to me; taking something ordinary and making it something more than it was.

Thanks for sharing this hobby with us. It's certainly new to me...much like cloud watching was!

I recently got into making handmade books from scratch (rather than altering old books) and these blank journals can make wonderful gifts too. Search your city for a "book arts" group. Check out Amazon.com for books by Alisa Golden, such as "Making Handmade Books", for 100+ ideas for $10.

 

[braumeister]

Lately, I've been thinking about maybe getting back into amateur radio. I was very active a long time ago, but not in the last 20 years.

I know there are some other hams here. Has anyone returned to the hobby after a long time away?

 

[Dancer373]

I'm an active "ham" and since ER I've branched out into other areas of the hobby. If you let your license expire, you should be able to find a club close by that gives tests. It's only $14-$15 to take. You might want to go to www.qrz.com first and take some practice tests to determine where you might need a little brushing up. Depending on what license you had before, things might have changed a little. There's more digital and no CW requirement now. Good luck !!!

 

[braumeister]

My license is current, since I still occasionally use 2M repeaters. Extra class, so I have no restrictions. It's kind of fun looking at the ads and reviews in QST, but it will be a while before I feel I know enough about the available toys to actually buy a new station. I'm kind of leaning toward the Yaesu FT-450D, as it seems to be a good, general purpose HF rig that doesn't break the bank. Antennas are another matter entirely.

What are your main ham interests now?

 

[Dancer373]

I'm an Extra as well......good thing you retained your license! My main HF rig is a Yaesu 950. I use a home brew off center fed dipole for HF and a Hy-Gain dual band for 2 meter. I'm involved in Amateur Radio Emergency Services (ARES) and SkyWarn weather activities. Living in north FL near the GA state line I work in both states for emergencies. Lots of good people in both spheres of amateur radio. I do a little bit of DX also.

 

[braumeister]

Yes, ARES seems like a very worthwhile activity. I'll probably get involved in that, if nothing else. No hurry, though. I'm thinking next year's Dayton Hamvention might be a good target date for buying a station. Thanks!

 

[Major Tom]

I sold my only commercial rig (an FT817) a month or two ago and to my surprise, haven't missed it that much. I have 2 kit-built radios - one on 40 and one on 80, and just finished building a simple yet high-performance regen for 40M. To my surprise, I heard FO8RZ in French Polynesia on it the other evening and worked him with 4 watts.

In the near future, I hope to be beta-testing a kit transceiver for a new ham radio kit company and am trying to figure out what (of all the ideas in my head) to build next.

Retirement (or at least in my case, semi-retirement) and home-brew really go well together. I wasn't going to mention this in the forum, as it's not really of interest to most folk, but seeing that you guys brought up the subject of ham radio.....

To my mind, there aren't many things more sublime than the smell of a hot soldering iron, a bunch of parts, a schematic to work from, the radio tuned to 40M in the background, and my kitty to keep me company

 

[Major Tom]

Here are a few pictures from the early stages of the regen build. It's finished now and the case is completely enclosed. It's stable, covers the entire 40M band, plus a little bit above and below, with a decent tuning rate (courtesy of a 10-turn pot), has low drift, and is quite sensitive. It also has minimal radiation from the antenna (a problem with many simple regen designs).

Apologies for the long ramble, but I'm a bit of a proud father right now!

 

[braumeister]

Very cool, Tom. Back in the day, I put quite a few Heathkits together so I know what you mean.

 

[Major Tom]

I remember borrowing a Hot-Water 101 from my local radio club as a newly licensed teen and excitedly working all over Europe on 20M with it (I grew up in England, so working all over Europe with 100W and a low-slung dipole wasn't that hard.)

More recently, Elecraft are a fabulous kit company but sadly, they seem to be offering more kits as a set of ready-made boards that you just plug together and put in a case, as opposed to soldering all the parts yourself. It's those darned surface mount devices taking all our fun away........

Do you remember which Heathkits you had braumeister?

 

[Lsbcal]

Hi Major Tom, nice hardware there. But where is the CPU?

...just kidding.

 

[Nords]

There's more digital and no CW requirement now.

Man I'm feeling like a dinosaur.

So, I'm guessing that I can stop saving my Navy Morse code flashcard deck for my daughter's benefit?

Eh, maybe the surface Navy still practices flashing light when they've run out of other things to do for fun...

 

[braumeister]

Do you remember which Heathkits you had braumeister?

Quite a few, but I never built one of their radios. Just all sorts of other things. The closest I came was the last Heathkit I ever built, the SB-220 kilowatt linear amplifier, with a pair of Eimac 3-500Z triodes. What a tank! I never even drove it to the legal limit, but it served me very well over the life of two commercial rigs, and I finally sold it for way more than I originally paid for the kit.

It broke my heart when Heathkit finally folded.

 

[eytonxav]

Lately, I've been thinking about maybe getting back into amateur radio. I was very active a long time ago, but not in the last 20 years.

I know there are some other hams here. Has anyone returned to the hobby after a long time away?

Seems like there are a lot of hams here. I'm still assembling a station and am a lowly general. Once I retire I will have more time to devote to this fascinating hobby and move up to extra. I live in an HOA nazi neighborhood, so stealth antennas are the only way to go, but wish I could have a nice antenna farm. Have been through Skywarn training and would like to join ARES. Have also been involved in my local community CERT.

 

[omni550]

These postings on ham radio bring back old memories.

Back in the summer of 7th grade (in the early '60s), I took a summer school enrichment class in radios. I was the only gal in the class. As part of the class we all built a Heathkit shortwave radio, (on our own time) as class time was spent learning radio and communication theory. I don't know which model it was (bear with me, it's been many years.) All I remember is that it had different plug-ins (coils?) that changed the bands at which the radio operated.

It was a lot of fun building the radio using my brand-new needle nose pliers and soldering iron while sitting on the front porch at a card table.

The best part was, my radio was the only one that worked. It took the instructor a while to figure out the issue with the other radios. As it turned out, I was the only one who followed directions (remember, I was the only gal in the class LOL) and read the part in the instruction manual that said to use 2 special screws (they were same size as all the others we'd been using, but were separately packaged as these needed to something special for the antenna connection).

As it turned out, there was some design flaw or something like that in the all of the kits, and the whole class ended up returning them for a refund.

And that was my short-lived radio hobby.

omni

 

[Major Tom]

Some great Ham Radio stories here.

DFW_M5 - QRP CW and digital modes such as PSK-31 can still work pretty well for you in a stealth situation.

omni550 - the kits that I build always work because I follow instructions to the letter, just like yourself. Good for you! That sounds like it was a fun kit.

 

[Major Tom]

It's a bit of a shame that we can't exchange callsigns here.

 

[braumeister]

It's a bit of a shame that we can't exchange callsigns here.

I've had four of them. One briefly where I was first licensed in 2-land, then a 9 when I moved to the midwest (back when moving meant a new call sign), then a 6 when I upgraded and was eligible for a 2x1 callsign, and now an 8 because DW and I got matching vanity callsigns. I also had a PY1 for a few years while overseas.

My years of real activity were with the 9 and the 6 calls. This post probably reads like pure gibberish to the non-hams.

 

[W2R]

This post probably reads like pure gibberish to the non-hams.

I'm not a ham, but it makes perfect sense to me. Frank is a ham, so I guess I have heard some of it before.

 

[Sarah in SC]

This post probably reads like pure gibberish to the non-hams.

yes, but surprisingly, still interesting. I love any sort of jargon, and passion, for a subject, so that is what comes across to the rest of us. Sounds like a very rewarding and useful hobby to me!
But Nords' Morse code flashcards? No way!

 

[Major Tom]

I've had four of them. One briefly where I was first licensed in 2-land, then a 9 when I moved to the midwest (back when moving meant a new call sign), then a 6 when I upgraded and was eligible for a 2x1 callsign, and now an 8 because DW and I got matching vanity callsigns. I also had a PY1 for a few years while overseas.

My years of real activity were with the 9 and the 6 calls. This post probably reads like pure gibberish to the non-hams.

I hear you on the gibberish thing. Having a hobby with both a technical nature and it's own peculair brand of jargon, mixed with the fact that I spend so much time thinking about and doing it means that when a friend or family member calls and says "what are you doing?" I'm faced with the choice of either telling them, "I just finished building a simple regen receiver and am surprised by it's stability and sensitivity, but think I am going to have add a pole or two of audio lowpass filtering" or the stock "Oh, just fiddling around with radios again".

Of course, I nearly always take the latter route. The end result is that some who know me probably think that I lead a dull life closeted with my radios in a dimly lit room fiddling with the same old knobs day after day. Little do they know that I am on a brave protagonist's journey to find the ultimate in simple yet high-performing shortwave receivers

Aaah, fine then. I spend my days mostly in my pajamas fiddling with radios. What do I care what others think Luckily my SO is a fellow bedroom geek who understands.

About the calls. You were DX? Cool! Wish I could one-up you braumeister, but my tally stands at 3. I had a VHF-only G8 license in the UK shortly after turning 15, then upgraded to the full G4 license (with code test) a few months later. On moving to the US, I didn't want to be bothered with continually going back for more tests, so just went for broke and did all the tests, including the 20wpm code, in one day and got the extra. With a few faltering exceptions, didn't use the code again for almost 20 years until a year or two ago, and have hardly used any other mode since. I've developed an aversion to microphones, but would pick one up if it were for an AM transmission

Apologies to all you normal people for the gibberish.

 

[Dancer373]

Proud you should be Major Tom!!

I would like to make it to the Dayton Hamfest sometime, it's on my list. I do go to Orlando Hamcation ( it's a 3 1/2 hour drive) every year as they have all the "new" products/modes to play with. They also have a HUGE boneyard.

 

[braumeister]

You were DX?

Actually, that's one of my favorite stories, so I'll bore you with it.

When I lived in Rio, I was able to get a Brazilian license under our reciprocity agreement. It took me about two days of wandering around various government offices to get all the required stamps on various pieces of paper, but I finally got it.

Unfortunately, I had sold my equipment before going there, and there was no chance of getting an antenna installed in my high-rise apartment building next to a cliff.

However, Brazilians have a saying that translates roughly "There's always a way around any difficulty; you just have to find it."

I learned that the US Consulate had a warehouse in a desolate part of the city, and there was a shortwave radio in it that was occasionally used to communicate with military flights from Panama. I got a consulate friend to loan me a key to the radio room, and I was allowed free access to it on weekends.

It was a general coverage transceiver, so it could easily tune the ham bands, and there was a huge honking rotatable log periodic antenna on the roof.

I would get on the air with my Brazilian call, and during a QSO with a US ham, I would frequently get a comment like "Wow, your English is incredibly good; I don't even hear any accent."

That was my opening. I had a little speech prepared to gently chide them about their built-in prejudice. "What, you think you're the only ones who can speak English? We have very good schools here -- some of them are probably better than some of yours. Etc. Etc. Etc. ...."

I had fun, and I didn't torment them too badly, but I like to think I did a little toward international understanding. At the time, I spoke nearly accentless Portuguese, so I wasn't a complete hypocrite.