A Crummy Commercial

Doing a Janus on kits for the end of 2025, start of 2026.  Unfortunately more bad kit news. The price of the Keyall HV+ kit has been raised by $7:    http://wb9kzy.com/keyallhvplus.htm This is due mainly to switching to a US supplier for the circuit board.  Essentially the tariff tax strikes again because I refuse to pay a Federal sales tax on circuit boards made outside the US.  And I need a supplier who will mail boards (many US suppliers refuse to do this).  And the only one I have dealt with in the past is Oshpark, they are the ones with the purple solder mask and the gold plating.  I may try DigiKey's Red circuit boards in the future but for now it is Oshpark. a computer generated picture of what the new boards will look like, basically same as the old except purple and more expensive Happy New Year :( Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm  

 Two items: The Battery Saver kit has been discontinued: FYI purple soldermask indicates a Made-in-USA board http://wb9kzy.com/batsave.htm Reason: not that much interest. Second item: Postage/handling increased to $6 flat rate per order. Bummer that the only recent kit news is bad :( Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm  

During the power outage yesterday I got out the Baofeng UV-5RE and noticed that I hadn't charged it probably since the last power outage :(  I got the two nearby National Weather Service stations: 162.425 in Sister Bay WI: https://www.weather.gov/nwr/sites?site=WXN69 and 162.5 in Escanaba MI:  https://www.weather.gov/nwr/sites?site=KZZ35 I had Escanaba on the lower VFO (down arrow).  Then I tried pressing the orange call button for FM broadcast but no dice.  Not a huge problem since I do have a number of FM radios but it's handy to be able to check the radio in hand at the time.   But later after consulting the internet search (including reddit in a search still seems to help) it just says press the orange button and you get FM.  I also did a reset which changes the voice prompts to Chinese AND resets the bottom VFO to UHF. powerup after reset with lower VFO set to UHF but upper VFO selected (up arrow)   I finally figured out that the bottom VFO H...

The power went off sometime during the night - there was a lot of rain on Sunday followed by snow.  Luckily no ice storm this time, just a blizzard. The power came back on about 12:05p on Monday, right after I said out loud: "come on you guys" - a phrase Dad Olson used to employ :) I thought I'd do a quick blog in case the power goes out again.  I should also work on some list of storm prep stuff like recharging batteries, buying batteries, Sterno (or equivalent) and so on.  And it's time to get outside and start clearing snow, still windy here but the temps are supposed to plummet   It's just so nice to have toasty feet again !   Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm    

Mentioned a work related story about Summertime in the blog yesterday.     This one ?:    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onTWpZalc7c No, no, not Summerland (although that's a wonderful composition and rendition), I want SUMMERTIME ! How about this ?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TK_z73tVbgU NO, That's Summertime, Summertime https://www.youtube.com/shorts/BE55yOQ_2to Yeah, that's the one ! The way Dizzy is looking at Ella is amazing - a decisive moment kind of like the pictures Cartier-Bresson or Gary Winogrand took - this picture was by William Gottlieb  https://www.newsweek.com/30-stunning-photos-golden-age-jazz-1582109 I *think* it was the first holiday season I worked at GTE (1977).  I went to the lunchroom as usual but in addition to the usual fare we were all treated to a mini-concert.  GTE in Northlake IL had clubs, all kinds of them - even photography and ham radio as I recall.  But they also had a music club of some kind because...

Man, those things are called coffin nails for a reason ! One other thing missing from the last coupla blogs was this online archive of Willis Conover tapes: https://digital.library.unt.edu/explore/collections/MLCC/browse/?fq=dc_type%3Asound A search on "VOA" didn't yield much though.  Needed to search on " Music USA " (the formal name of the VOA show) to find quite a few hours that were on the VOA.  For example several songs and a brief interview with "the divine one", Sarah Vaughan: https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc770492/m1/#track/10 I've never heard Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald perform selections from Porgy and Bess , amazing !: https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc800482/m1/#track/4 (BTW someday I'll have to post my story about listening to the song: Summertime  at GTE) Conover also wrote and acted in an Old Time Radio show: Hazel and Harold .  There are six episodes from 1946 here: https://digital.library...

One thing missing from the blog post yesterday was the radio price.  This was the latest Allied ad I saw for the S-120, on sale March 31, 1966: Inflated:    I can't really remember when I got that radio, certainly had it in 8th grade (1968-69) but did I have it in 1966 ?  I don't think so.  So possibly it was an advertised special from the local Allied store after that ?  The S-120 doesn't show in the 1967 or later Allied main catalogs.  I believe I may have QSL cards that might indicate when I started listening. One other radio in that same 1966 Allied sale catalog was the Knight-kit Star Roamer: That might have been a less expensive alternative.  5 bands versus 4 on the S-120, a signal meter - no BFO but I have read elsewhere that it could pick up Morse code and SSB.  A couple more advantages are that a safer transformer power supply is used (rather than the transformerless "hot" chassis of the S-120) with an actual fuse (rather than a ther...