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Politics : Dutch Central Bank Sale Announcement Imminent? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: philv who wrote (19715)	12/1/2003 9:59:06 PM
From: sea_urchin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81118

Phil > I have the Icom R71A receiver, and enjoyed listening in from time to time. That's a nice radio. I also started by listening but I was 12 yrs old then. After that I built a receiver and then a transmitter but did nothing for many years in order to do some studies and then make a living. > Were you ever able to contact N. America? Probably on 20 or 40 meter band? Easily. My favorite was 40m CW (morse). The band is noisy and one has to have very good ears and a good station to any make any DX communication at all. > I just got a hunch you have a big setup with a huge high antenna, right? Many antennas of all types --- building antennas is part of the fun and the challenge. But I've taken most of them down now. I still have one beam and a wire antenna. > I once read of a guy who was trying to contact the world on 5 watts of power on S.W. (probably code), and getting fantastic results. At the top of the sunspot cycle it's easy. Many people have done the DXCC (100 Country award) using milliwatts. > It is hard to imagine radiating 5 watts of power, having it travel around the world in waves like a pebble tossed in a pond of water, and somebody actually receiving and understanding that signal, hugely reduced in power. That must be a thrill, which only Ham guys can appreciate. Actually, it's a very interesting and exciting hobby but now there are very few active operators. Besides the challenge of the internet, part of the problem is that the transmitters interfere with TV etc in the cities and only those in the country or on big plots can have big antennas. > They now broadcast at 1000+ watts with 100+ ft. antennas and punch through almost any atmospheric conditions. That's been state-of-the-art since ham radio became popular in the 1940s. I once ran two kilowatt amplifiers simultaneously into two beam antennas, just for the hell of it. Of course, as usual, the Yanks always had the biggest and the best stations. But I loved to tease them by pretending my station was a lot more elaborate than it was. In fact, many judged a ham by the expense of his station --- so I knew always to have the latest and the best. Sometimes, when conditions were right, I used to have "pile-ups" right across the US, from California to NY, as many hams called in to talk to me and I would tease them all. Many Americans didn't even know where Africa was. I used to tell them that in Johannesburg we found gold in the streets and lions and tigers walked by my bedroom at night. They believed it all. When I think about it now, it really was a lot of fun.