On Oct 29, 1:42 am, geek wrote:
On Sun, 28 Oct 2007 20:10:27 +0000, John Tartar wrote:
The deadline for the ARRL homebrew challenge has passed and I hear that the
ARRL received 4 entries, all NO computer radios. NONE were in the computer
assisted category. Publication is scheduled for Feb 2008 QST

A Yahoo group was started to discuss developments.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ARRLHBC/

Some of the entrants have posting info about their entries there.

Four entries? This does not bode well for the hobby :-(

It's astonishing that anyone was able to meet the requirements: A $50
HF CW and voice transceiver meeting FCC spectral requirements. That's
astonishing.

I mean, 40 years ago some of were cobbling together crystal-controlled
CW transmitters for $10 or $15 plus a lot of raiding of old TV's and
radios for tubes, transformers, etc. The fact that the same inflation-
adjusted amount of money allows something that is way superior
functionally with modern stuff is good news!

IMHO, building at least some of your own stuff should be a prerequisite
for the license.

Maybe, but requiring someone to build a multimode HF transceiver from
scratch would have been even more onerous 40 years ago than it is
today. Some folks will complain about the cost of a rig (and in fact
these complaints were the impetus behind the homebrew challenge), but
with used, all-band, multimode HF rigs available for just a few
hundred dollars I don't see how cost can matter much.

There was a really funny letter that QST published over the summer,
saying "there's no way to do anything on HF without a $6000 radio and
multiple towers filled with beam arrays anymore". My response: I
turned on my old Heath HW-16 (paid $50 for it a few months before) and
worked a dozen European/Eurasian countries and Senegal without even
trying. It's like some are setting the bar way too high or way too
low, when really it's about having fun.

Tim.