"N2EY" wrote in message
om...
"Kim" wrote in message
...
"N2EY" wrote in message
...

- New car prices ranged from $3000 to $5000
- Gasoline was about 60 cents a gallon
- A year's tuition at an Ivy League university was $4500
- Ham rig prices were somewhat less than today's prices Maybe 60-75%.
- Inflation was double digit and interest rates were not far behind

73 de Jim, N2EY

My first son was born in October 1974.

Are you gonna be mad at me if I call ya grandma?


Proud of it!! She's eight years old and we go shopping all the time. I've
been teaching her to shop since she was about 18 months old. Every school
year so far, we've paid a visit to Payless Shoe Source. I save all Summer,
and when we go in the store I tell her to start picking until I tell her to
stop. We have a blast!

Oh, and she is my youngest son's daughter. Oldest has never had kids yet.


Anyway, so health issues aside (and other than pregnancy neither of us
ever
went to the doctor), we, uh, well, subsisted on that income. Heh heh,
we
sure didn't "live" on it, but we weren't in need; we had food on the
table,
gas for the car to go to work, and rented an actual house. Granted, we
went
without cooking gas all Summer (we cooked on a grill outside or ate a
lot of
sandwiches), so we could save up for heating oil through the Winter.
The
house rent, if I remember correctly, was $75.00/month. Two-story,
2-bdrm, 1
bath, kitchen, living and dining. Huge lot (I grew and froze all our
veggies in a 32' x 32' garden--with NO motorized tools mind ya), we had
a
deer every Winter that I'd make stretch for meats (mostly ground to make
it
last), and my husband ate fish (trout right out of the Battenkill
River).
Yuk, I didn't like fish.

This was New York State?


Oh, definitely. I lived in NY until 1979.


I got my first deer a little less than 2 years ago. Only problem was I
got 'er with a Honda Odyssey. Even though I asked nice, for some
reason the body shop wouldn't paint a little Bambi outline on the new
fender...


Well, yeah, deer are hard to come by if one is depending upon only "one"
man--and don't get any twisted ideas there... What I mean is, all the guys
used to start hunting on Season open. Good 'ol Rick usually got first meat
by Thanksgiving. He was single and, actually, going to college at the time
(he's the reason we were on the Plattsburgh campus to see Alice Cooper).
So, about three of us families would divvy up that one. Then, as it went,
there'd usually be one or two more and we'd divvy that one up. One could
end up with a freezer full of ground meat. My kids' Godfather tried to get
me into racoon and turtle but, dude, that weren't happenin'.


Gasoline for the auto, what was it? $0.28 or something near there?

Until it doubled after the first OPEC embargo. But yeah, it was cheap,
as were used cars and parts. Plus you could work on 'em yourself.


heh heh...yeah, or use them for freezers! We used to have a Ford Galaxy
that died on us in the middle of Winter. Same week, the fridge went. Well,
money was tight. So, we'd use the car to keep the refridgerated stuff in
and, believe it or not, it was actually cold enough to even keep ice cream a
day or two!


Oddly enough, gas today is even cheaper, once you adjust for
inflation. It's one of the few necessities that has gone that way.


Oh no...good 'ol Rick (mentioned above) used to get into how money was going
to be cheaper in the future than it was then...in fact, he'd make long-term
credit purchases based upon that. You mathemeticians!


Yup. A lot depended on what it cost to wash the diapers vs. buying the
disposables. If you pay all your own utilities the cloth route gets
expensive real fast. If the water and electric are somebody else's
problem it goes the other way.

Then there's baby formula vs....no, I'm NOT gonna go there!


Yeah, and neither did I


Anyway, life may have seemed simpler then, and maybe it was to some
degree.
But, I'll take life today much quicker! I could not be shopping for a
2300
sq. ft. home back then!!

2300 sf would be a big house fer me, then or today. Location,
location, location....


Right here where we are at. Moving it in before the end of this year. And,
it is big! We've decided instead of building, to go ahead and buy a
manufactured home, and have a pier and beam foundation put in, then move it
onto that. We can get more house for the money, it's vinyl sided, has the
OSB top, bottom, and sides (marine grade), we've upgraded the carpet, have
two living areas, 3 baths (if the home we think we've settled on ends up
being the one we get), and I'll gain an extra bedroom to boot! That's in
case my parents or my hubby's Mom ever has to come and live with us (the two
living areas will accommodate a nice gathering and be good for if the
parents have to live with us, too!).


In the "old days", necessities were relatively inexpensive and
luxuries were relatively expensive. But since then the trend has been
for the necessities to get more and more expensive and the luxuries
cheaper and cheaper. So now many hams can afford a $1000-2000 rig, but
they can't afford a nice house on a big lot with no CC&Rs to put the
rig in.


Yeah, it seems that way. I was just telling my darlin' the other day that I
still feel "priviledged" to shop for something in a store called Linens and
Things (don't know if you have those up there). I remember when that store
used to be for the rich folks (from my perspective).


IIRC the minimum wage back in '75 was around $1.50, and there are
about 2000 working hours in a straight-time year. (40 hrs/week x 50
weeks). So you folks were essentially living on one minimum-wage
income. Think about what those numbers work out to today...

73 de Jim, N2EY

2080 hrs. to be exact. And, that wage sounds about right. Hey, do you
remember when 5-Friday months were the cat's meow? Or, did you ever budget
that way? I budgeted based on a four week month. When those 5 Fridays
rolled around, that was high cotton time!

Yes, I was a stay-at-home mom until my kid (one went to go live with his
dad) was about 11 and then was working from home, so still was at home for
him. I've only been climbing the professional ladder for about 18 years;
somewhere around there anyway.

Radio. Yeah, I remember when we first became hams! I didn't know it, but
Cliff had been saving from the time I'd gotten him interested in the hobby
and we were going to classes and "studying." When we got our ticket--he
started out with swim COW so he was a Tech+, he went out and bought a Yeas
890AT (or is that 850AT). Anyway, he got what was then a darned nice radio
with all the bells and whistles. We already had a 70' tower up, with a 10M
quad antenna on top. Man, that thing was nice. First bad wind that year
(90 mph past the house--straight line winds) blew that quad over and broke
one of the fiberglass spreaders. We could have replaced it. But, this was
a 3-element quad for 10M. Imagine how darned big and cumbersome that thing
was!?

Kim W5TIT

On Sat, 13 Sep 2003 22:17:21 -0500, Kim W5TIT wrote:

IIRC the minimum wage back in '75 was around $1.50, and there are
about 2000 working hours in a straight-time year. (40 hrs/week x 50
weeks). So you folks were essentially living on one minimum-wage
income. Think about what those numbers work out to today...

2080 hrs. to be exact.

Somewhere in the early 80s the Feds changed to 2087 to account for
the leap year day. Even though it changed our paychecks only by the
cost of a donut or two, did we scream. To no avail, of course.

Man, that thing was nice. First bad wind that year
(90 mph past the house--straight line winds) blew that quad over and broke
one of the fiberglass spreaders. We could have replaced it. But, this was
a 3-element quad for 10M. Imagine how darned big and cumbersome that thing
was!?

Was it a 11-meter "cubical quad" before it became a 10-meter quad ??
Hmmm.... ????

--
73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane

From a Clearing in the Silicon Forest
Beaverton (Washington County) Oregon

"Phil Kane" wrote in message
et...
Was it a 11-meter "cubical quad" before it became a 10-meter quad ??
Hmmm.... ????

--
73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane

What are the implications if it was, Phil? Most antenna manufacturers market
their 10/11m single band models as such. This includes Maco (ex Wilson),
Mosley, Butternut, Trident (UK), Max-Gain, Delta X-Ray, and Cubex.

Quote from Cubex:

"These same construction techniques are used in our new line of rugged Quad
antennas for the 11M band - The MAGNUM-CB Series!"

Is there a difference? (Other than frequency, that is.)

--
73 de Bert
WA2SI

On Mon, 15 Sep 2003 16:04:51 GMT, Bert Craig wrote:

Was it a 11-meter "cubical quad" before it became a 10-meter quad ??
Hmmm.... ????

What are the implications if it was, Phil?

"Stand Clear of the Chain....." ggg

--
73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane

"Phil Kane" wrote in message
et...
On Mon, 15 Sep 2003 16:04:51 GMT, Bert Craig wrote:

Was it a 11-meter "cubical quad" before it became a 10-meter quad ??
Hmmm.... ????

What are the implications if it was, Phil?

"Stand Clear of the Chain....." ggg

--
73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane

LOL! Good one, Phil.

--
73 de Bert
WA2SI