On Wed, 17 Oct 2018, Gareth's Downstairs Computer wrote:

On 16/10/2018 20:47, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

Let me bring it closer to home. You purchased an expensive HF radio
with all the bells and whistles. It's out of warranty and you need
something fixed. Would you send it to 1) the factory, 2) an
authorized repair station, 3) a rebuilder in China, 4) the ham
equivalent of the shade tree mechanic, or 5) the teenager next door?

If you send to anyone other than yourself then you are not
a real radio ham or radio amateur.

A CBer, probably.

Except you've built a lot of equipment, and know the theory well. Maybe
you bought one of those fancy rigs that include 50/144/432 so you can go
to a mountaintop so easily and work DX when the band is open. Way more
portable thant equipment from fifty years ago, and it covers all bands
(though maybe not the newer LF bands). Your experimentation is in
following and observing propaganda.

And if you just spent a lot of money on that rig, you might hesitate
because it's small and expensive, rather than because you don't understand
the circuitry,

I know I'm tempted, 46 years after I was licensed, some money I could
spend on it when I've never bought a new rig (or anything much in the way
of used rigs) over the decades. I like the idea of a portable rig, and I
like the idea of it being all bands, because I am way more interested in
VHF and UHF SSB than HF. I know I drooled over the ICOM portables from
the seventies, they had a line that included a 2M FM rig, but also 6M SSB
and 2M SSB, and I think one for 432. Compact and portable and low power.
You can't expect much from an SSB VHF rig unless you're expecting to do
something esoteric with it, like DX or satellite work.

YOu are endlessly trying to set up a classification system that would
never really let many in. The only person I knew that had a COllins rig
was the guy who ran the local code & theory class for decades, who was
very much into the technical end of the hobby and lamented when the rules
changed so the one couldn't build a transmitter with the entry level
license. There's no contradiction, he had his rig and he fixed it when
necessary, but he also build things and kept up with the technical end of
the hobby.

Michael