W6OIC Rigs
Dexter
Maitland
Zanoni was
kind enough to post my rebuttal to his ranting about amateur radio. He was even more kind to convert it from
e-mail format and post it as part of his web site without changing anything. (Even so, he still has not changed his name
to “Elmer.”) Anyway, he asked me to
write another page, this time about how I fit amateur radio into my life and
the type of equipment I use. Actually, I
think he just wants more material for his “Wandering Hermit” stories.
To understand
how amateur radio fits into my life, you must know something about my
life. I do not own a house, a car, or
real property. Yet, I am able to live
comfortably (usually out of the weather), travel widely, and stay in some of the
most beautiful areas on this planet. I
own fewer than ten books, yet I am able to consult the greatest libraries of
the world. I have no office or clinic,
yet I am able to effectively practice medicine.
I am in excellent health, have friends throughout the world, and carry
on an extensive correspondence. I save
much more money than I spend, and my yearly living expenses in the past three
years have never exceeded $4,000. I have
accomplished all of this using resources available to anyone, merely requiring
that one make some decisive choices about how they want to live their
life. (Although life sometimes makes the
hard choices for us and we just learn to survive well.)
What I did in
the past does not matter because that was with “bigger penis than you have”
rigs and a tower. What really matters is
that in the past five years I have managed to work all states, all Canadian
provinces, all continents, and 23 countries.
Albeit most of this was on QRP CW, I have worked quite a few states and
countries on 10 meter SSB. I also
routinely talk to friends in
My primary
“rig” is a Small Wonder Labs Rock-Mite transceiver on 40 meters built into an
Altoids tin. Its output is about ½
watt. The key is a pair of door
interlock micro-switches taken from a microwave oven I found in a
dumpster. They are connected in parallel
and epoxied onto the lid of the tin; I use them with a sideways motion. The
code is somewhat distinctive, however it is easy copy. (I worked a guy once with a sideswiper made
from two J-38s screwed base to base; sounds like that.) Power comes from a 12 volt battery taken out
of a cordless telephone found in another dumpster. This is charged by a “bank” of cells from
four solar yard-lights given to me by a gardener who was throwing them away. The antenna is a dipole from 26 gauge wire,
cut for 7040. This all rolls up into a
plastic bag and weighs about twelve ounces. (A
My “fixed
base” rig is a Radio Shack HX-10 that I bought for $30 on e-Bay. It probably puts out 20 watts on 10 meter
SSB. The antenna is an IronHorse
vertical that I bought at a thrift store for $1. Feedline is CATV coax that I
found by the road. I could probably
tune it better if I had a SWR meter, but I do quite well with it tuned for max
receiver noise. Power is from two
salvaged car batteries trickle-charged with a solar cell of the type used to
keep VW batteries up while cars are being shipped. (These batteries also provide power for my
one electric light.) This rig lives in a
small shack near the Tibetan temple in the
VHF became
problematic a couple of years ago when all of the local (southern
That’s
basically it. Don’t subscribe to
magazines; not a member of ARRL, AMA, NRA, AARP, PDQ, or BVD; make enough money
to keep my licenses active and survive but not much more. Amazed often at what simple equipment can do
(although I would not call the Rock Mite simple in terms of circuitry, it is
elegant.) Only send QSL to DX stations;
make mine by pasting magazine cutouts and doing hand lettering on heavy paper
(usually from the dumpster behind the art framing shop in
73 – Dex
[Note from NG7A. This was edited some. Dr Maitland tends to use unusual punctuation and lots of parentheses that makes reading his prose like listening to him. He will get on some circuitous narrative path with many sidebar stories, but eventually tie everything together. The original was in the form of three long e-mails.]