"Mike Coslo" wrote in message
...
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 -

Absolutely. It's often because they are the ones that have both the time
and money to pursue new interests.

Dee D. Flint, N8UZE