Dave Holford wrote:
Fascinating, I don't know who you talk to but I can only think of a couple of people I know
using Drake stuff, and then only as collectors items or though nostalgia. Can't remember the
last time I heard someone mention Henry, except in an inductor value, and one of the few
pictures of Heathkit equipment I have seen in a long time was in a magazine on antique
equipment a (younger) friend showed me a couple of weeks ago.

I have a real hard time believing that the long overdue dropping of CW will result in much
of an influx to HF. If they were interested in HF they would already be here.

I've had a two hour HF swap shop running in the background and I don't think I heard
anything that old being offered for sale or looked for except for a couple of antique RCA,
Hammarlund and National receivers, but they were in the antiques listing. Plenty of DSP rigs
and digital stuff, a few people looking for specialized digital ICs. It is quite common to
hear current generation equipment being sold by very elderly hams due to deteriorating
health and/or moving into nursing homes or apartments where they must give up the hobby.

I'm having coffee with an 81 year old tomorrow and he has a DSP HF rig; and a software
defined receiver running on his backup PC, which he also uses to watch TV and movies. He
usually has at least one PC in pieces as he reconfigures it and has been inside his ICOM and
Kenwood HF rigs with a soldering iron more than once, although as his age creeps up he is
reducing those activities somewhat. He will probably want to discuss optimizing the data
base for his SDR receiver.

Not every ham over 40 is using a hand key to a crystal controlled 6L6.

Do people have their 60th birthday, and suddenly become stupid or
something? I had a PSK31 QSO with a 96 y.o. Hams last year. He was
checking out his new laptop. Had a modern rig also. That's just one
case. There are plenty other oldsters I've QSO'ed with who are trourghly
modern.

- Mike KB3EIA -