The Gun Counter

And my wife says I can keep it!

Icom IC-706MKIIG "DC-Daylight" amateur transceiver.

Does HF, VHF, UHF; SSB, CW, AM, FM, WFM (Receive) This is the first, brand new, out of the box, HF rig I've ever bought.

It's in the shack for a while so I can get acquainted and wait for nicer weather to install in my truck. Also, looking at buying a Tarheel screwdriver antenna at Hamvention in May.

The plan is to have it in place for the family vacation this summer (Driving out to Mt Rushmore and other other wise wander more or less aimlessly about the plains).

I've looked at others, but either their displays were too small (FT-857), control head and body too large (TS-480), or QRP (low power) (IC-703). I'm fairly familiar with this rig as many of my friends have them.

So, if I seem a little distracted over the next few days....

Well, color me jealous!!!

I have had only two, count em, two transcievers new out of the box. Both 2-meter. An Icom mobile rig and a Kenwood HT. The Icom was stolen out of my vehicle in Phoenix several years ago. The idiot cut the antenna wire between the radio and the connector!

I have no idea what any of that is, but well wear all the same!

Denis wrote:I have no idea what any of that is, but well wear all the same!

Think of it as a Swiss Army Knife for amateur radio. It does a little of everything in one package. Not as well as specialized gear optimized for one type of activity, but good enough for most uses.

And thanks for the sentiment.

It's not quite DC to blue light, but something very close

The last rigs I had were a pair of Marconi Scimitar military VHF radios. Frequency hopping and encrypted speech + data. When they got de-milled the encryption and hopping capabilities were meant to have been removed, but I got a schematic and had a look inside to see if I could fix that - I'm no electronics expert but one of my less useless talents is that I'm a shade tree radio repairman.
I could see from the schematic that there wasn't a seperate crypto PCB, it was on the same plugin module as the FM modulator. So they couldn't just take the board out without the whole thing stopping working.
When I opened the module there was a track on the pcb crudely scratched out and a desoldered resistor, the value of which I knew from the schematic. So after a 10 minute repair.....

But after a while I realised that the UN wasn't really going to invade ( they don't have to...) , I wasn't ever going to star in a real world anglicised version of Red Dawn, and so I didn't really need covert encrypted comms

So then there are these two green electronic boxes gathering dust on a shelf which I paid $200 for, but have a market value of $1200.....I was careful who I sold them to, but sell them I did.

randy wrote:

Denis wrote:I have no idea what any of that is, but well wear all the same!

Think of it as a Swiss Army Knife for amateur radio. It does a little of everything in one package. Not as well as specialized gear optimized for one type of activity, but good enough for most uses.

And thanks for the sentiment.

I am as in the dark as Denis, but I do understand the Swiss Army Knife thing, so CONGRATULATIONS.

cu74 wrote:I am as in the dark as Denis, but I do understand the Swiss Army Knife thing, so CONGRATULATIONS.

Quite. I approve of Swiss Army knives; Randy's new one probably just looks a bit funny.

Highspeed wrote:a real world anglicised version of Red Dawn

I can see this now.

"Are you sure this is Red Dawn?"

"It's the new English version, yes."

"That explains the two Yorkshiremen with side-by-sides shouting "HEDGEHOGS!" then."

"I suppose it does, that."

SoupOrMan wrote:

Highspeed wrote:a real world anglicised version of Red Dawn

I can see this now.

"Are you sure this is Red Dawn?"

"It's the new English version, yes."

"That explains the two Yorkshiremen with side-by-sides shouting "HEDGEHOGS!" then."

"I suppose it does, that."

You are soooooo lucky I had already swallowed my whiskey when I read that. Ii don't generally laugh out loud when reading or watching movies. I did just now.

HEDGEHOGS!!!

Very good.

I'm still using the HW-101 I built at Adak in 1980. It has 29 tube (sections) and one transistor.

Most of my other equipment is older; Hammarlund, Collins, Hallicrafters, Meissner, and
Echophone!