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Old 12-09-2017, 01:33 PM
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Jeffhs Jeffhs is offline
<----Zenith C845
 
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Fairport Harbor, Ohio (near Lake Erie)
Posts: 4,035
Your setup reminds me of what I had before I moved. HF, 2 meters and packet, with a 70-foot loaded all-band dipole in my back yard (which was contantly coming down every time there was a good wind) and a CushCraft Ringo Ranger ARX-2 for 2m. Then came November 1999, and I had to give it all up when I moved to the apartment I live in today. I still have my license, but next to no equipment; all I have now is an Icom 2m handheld, which brings up just one repeater in this area. I also have Echolink on my computer, but I don't use it much these days (no provision to use CW, which I miss very much). I miss the old days when I could work stations left and right with 5-10w on 30m CW.

If I could, believe me I would move to a house so I could put up an antenna again, but very unfortunately, due to circumstances, I am stuck here in this apartment indefinitely (been here 18 years so far). To make matters even worse (!), I don't drive, which means I cannot get to the meetings of the radio club (Lake County, Ohio ARA) I belong to. I used to be able to get to those meetings quite regularly after I moved here, but since the transit system here cut back their hours severely a few years ago, I can no longer get to the club meeting site, and there is no one near me who would take me there.

Oh well. It was loads of fun while it lasted (I worked 49 states and a bunch of foreign countries, almost all on 80-40-20m CW), but as I said, due to circumstances that forced me to move to where I live now, it is all just a memory. If Echolink supported CW operations I'd feel better about using it, but since it only supports voice operation (FM only), I am forced to use a mode (FM voice) I am not now and have never been comfortable with (I operated almost exclusively CW when I lived in a Cleveland suburb, using voice only to occasionally check in to two traffic nets).

If there were anyone in my area who could help me get my HF station back on the air, I'd feel better too, but because no one around here wants to have much to do with me (a ham who lives just a couple blocks from me will not so much as speak to me, and I have no idea why), I guess my Icom IC-725 will stay in its box in a corner of my bedroom, unused, as it has since I moved here. The power supply (Astron RS-35) is still on a small desk in my bedroom, but I am afraid to plug it in for fear it might short out or the filter capacitors might explode from 18 years of disuse.


Life is just so darned unfair.........
__________________
Jeff, WB8NHV

Collecting, restoring and enjoying vintage Zenith radios since 2002

Zenith. Gone, but not forgotten.

Last edited by Jeffhs; 12-09-2017 at 01:46 PM.
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