I received a reminder from the INDEXA Treasurer that my membership is due for renewal in August. I didn’t renew my annual contribution to NCDXF this last time either. This comes amidst the purge a time where I have decided to let all memberships and subscriptions go as a way of trimming costs in my retirement years. I want to talk about that, but first I have been meaning to chat a bit about DX organizations and the ongoing need to fund them. Do they do good? Well of course they do! The modern DXpedition likely couldn’t exist without their support and funding. But here’s my experience - I donate to both clubs annually, then I work some DXpedition they are supporting and that DXpedition web site tells me that if I send them five dollars directly, I’ll receive a more rapid LoTW response confirming our contact.
So I ask again, respectfully, are these DX organizations still worth supporting?
Another issue is that funds doled out by others may go to things I want to support, or not. It’s all well and good that some offer funds to help offset some college costs for youth, but I’m not convinced DX organizations are the best arbiters of this kind of decision. The rub isn’t the recipients, but that other people decide what to do with my money. Honestly, it seems much cleaner for me to choose to support a particular DXpedition directly, by following the instructions on their web site. In this way, if I prefer to help fund CW only operations versus digital operations (etc.) I can decided how best to donate my money.
There was a time when web sites weren’t ubiquitous and PayPal non-existent. In those days the DX organizations pooled donations and handled all that work, it was really the only way to get this done. But is that still the case in 2025? I have enough doubts that I probably won’t renew my INDEXA support this year. I will continue directly funding certain DX operations that directly request funding, like 3Y0K Bouvet 2026. I assume these will quit offering direct funding options if that isn’t working well for them at which time I can re-visit this decision.
Now about the purge - I had made plans before retiring to add Life Memberships to a few select organizations so I could dispense with the annual outlays while on a fixed income. I’ve been a Life Member of ARRL and AMSAT forever so those were assured. But I also became a Life Member of the Long Island CW Club and the Quarter Century Wireless Association with the notion of letting everything else go. That included several clubs as well as a half-dozen subscriptions. I’ve been a subscriber to The Daily DX since a previous millennium and I hate to let it go, but I believe I have renewed for the final time. It will be nearly impossible to let go of my subscription to SPRAT magazine from the GQRP Club, but it’s set to expire at year-end.
I often remind my wife we’re “retired” now and need to begin acting like it, fiscally. But it’s still hard cheese to let go of some things. If GQRP had a LM option I would have bought one decades ago and would still be reading SPRAT as I exit, stage left…
The AN/ARC-5 Family
I became interested in amateur radio while in high school. A couple of my teacher’s found out and they quickly ushered me into a secret room just behind the gymnasium. They had a goal of making this the radio room for a school radio club someday, but on first inspection it was loaded from the floor to the ceiling with old WWII surplus gear that had been donated and none of it worked. Among these were several ARC-5 receivers. I befriended one of them and spent a semester bringing it back to life.
After high school I picked up one of my own at a local hamfest and nursed it back to health too. It was a fairly lousy HF receiver and I soon sold it to help offset the cost of a shiny new VHF handheld transceiver. This is why people my age often think young people are dumb asses. Because we were young once and we were dumb asses. To this day I cannot believe I traded a working piece of World War II radio history for a shitty FM handheld. But hey, it was the 1970s and FM repeaters were everywhere. And one of them even had an auto-patch. Sigh.
After World War II, surplus HF receivers and transmitters of the AN/ARC-5 family were extensively used in amateur radio stations. According to CQ magazine publisher Wayne Green, they first appeared for public purchase in March 1947, with thousands eventually becoming available, making them “by far the most popular surplus item to appear on the market.” Green’s magazine alone published some 47 articles on converting command sets to amateur use over the following 10 years, reprinting them in a compendium in 1957. Interest has continued into the 21st century.
Who You Gonna Call?
”Confidence is what you have before you understand the problem” - Woody Allen
So I’m chatting over coffee with a couple of friends, all of us older gents who have been playing around with ham radio since back when our memories were all black and white. We were discussing a new problem, as if the hobby/service needed yet another thing to worry about. Our discussion was about towers and whether these would continue to exist into the future. The problem is pretty simple. We’ve all become too old to climb towers to perform repairs or even regular maintenance. This isn’t a brand new problem, but it has been evolving in such a way that it makes resolution more difficult than it once was.
A fellow has an 80-foot tower that has been in service for more than three decades. Anytime something needed to be done he puts on the appropriate safety gear and climbs the tower. But that’s a young man’s game. Once this fellow turned 65 his wife (and his equilibrium) wouldn’t let him climb the tower anymore, a problem easily resolved by getting a much younger fellow from the local radio club to help him out and perform the service for him. That worked, so long as there were willing and capable younger folks in the local club. But now looking around at the active club members on Field Day it was easy to see that everyone was more than 70 years old and there was none left to volunteer to help on the tower.
The expensive option is to hire a local tower climber to do the work. This required first finding such a professional, explaining what needed to be accomplished “up top” and then writing them a hefty check. As it turned out, payment was comparatively easy, finding someone was the real chore. Somewhere back in our long ago there were plenty of locals who installed television antennas and towers in the commercial realm and these could be called on in a pinch. But in an era where most people don’t even know “over the air” television exists, there’s so little demand for TV antenna installers that they have become as rare as hens teeth. Good luck finding someone.
Even more ridiculous, the biggest local tower problem isn’t finding someone to climb to the top and replace an antenna or feed line, the bigger challenge is finding someone to take the tower down. More than a few of the local hams with large towers have passed from this life leaving their spouse or family to figure out how to take it all down. One of my friends highlighted this problem when told the story of a mutual acquaintance who died and when his kids tried to sell his house several potential buyers said they would only make an offer once all the antenna equipment was first removed. Who you gonna call?
Gone Walkabout
Just another hot, muggy day in the Heartland. The only good news on our weather front is that with the 4th of July in the rearview mirror summer is moving closer to its conclusion. The kids are going back to school earlier than usual this year. The grandchildren tell me they will be back at it on August 8th which seems insanely early to me. When I was a kid we got Memorial Day to Labor Day for summer vacation, but we had to avoid being stepped on by dinosaurs back then…
I think we’re going to do some local exploring today. I follow the blog of a fellow who is a former board member of the Delaware County Historical Society and he often points out obscure, but interesting places that I’ve mostly never heard about. His latest being about an old well that’s just a few miles south of here that I didn’t know existed. Should be interesting to try and locate it, hopefully before we’re dripping sweat with the joy of this summer weather.
The rapidly growing grass has finally slowed a bit. I’ll have to mow again soon but at least now it’s only once a week. We haven’t had nearly as much rain the last two weeks though there have been empty threats of thunderstorms daily. Disconnecting all the radio gear every time we leave the house is a pain, but it beats shipping lightning damaged gear back to the factory for repair.
Tomorrow evening the farmers market will resume. It was paused last week because the meadow where it takes place was ground zero for the community fireworks. It’s within easy walking distance and we try to visit it each week. I especially enjoy watching the seasonal progression of the available fruits and vegetables. It’s almost time for the fresh sweet corn to start showing up and I want to get an early taste of it. Plus, last time there I picked up two-dozen farm fresh large eggs for three-bucks a dozen, provided I bring the egg cartons back to be re-used. I much prefer the free-range eggs to the sweat shop squat bubbles you get at the supermarket. I can’t go back, I won’t!
Grenada J38DX
I copied a rock solid signal from J38DX this morning on 20 meters. Despite an hour of trying to work what would be an ATNO, I came away empty. According to his QRZ info, Eric, GM5RDX will be on the island until Sunday, July 13th. So there should be a few more chances to snag this one. You’d think Grenada would be a chip shot from here, but there was nothing doing today.
Lovely Day
Wednesday morning was a gift. I awoke to 60F with much lower humidity and hurried outside for a long walk while it was so nice. But not before opening all the windows to get some of this wonderful cool into the house after a solid month of being hermetically sealed away from the oppressive heat and humidity. By noon the temperature was rising rapidly so I closed the place back up and once again cranked up the air conditioning. I sure appreciated that lovely break…
As expected, LoTW came back up yesterday and seemed to buckle a little as the day wore on. You gotta figure there must have been a motherlode of Field Day contact confirmations hitting the server all at the same time. Looks like it’s still catching up with the incoming flood of server requests.
I did spend an hour in the shack and made a few contacts. One of them with KD6XU who was calling CQ POTA on 20. Copy was light, practically ESP levels. After kicking in the APF (CW audio peaking filter ) on the K4 and with a little tweaking I was able to make solid contact with Barry who was operating from the San Diego Bay National Wildlife Refuge (US-0209). Though our contact was brief, I followed up on his QRZ page where I saw he is a sailor, an ocean going fellow who sails the South Pacific for fun. I even watched a couple of his YouTube videos capturing his adventures at sea.
Once the sun went down the backyard was the place to be. The fireflies put on a proper show which was a little unusual because I don’t recall having seen so many of them in recent years. I also noticed the flowers and the lawn looked especially beautiful, the fireflies added magic to all this was the perfect end of what was an incredibly lovely day. Maybe I haven’t been paying close enough attention to these simple yet wonderful perks of life on this amazing planet?
Grindstone
Added two more WWA stations yesterday. Making twenty-five WWA contacts this week a stretch goal. I did snag a couple more POTA stations along the way. Later in the day I added A71AT and Z33Z to the log too. Then there were a handful of 13 Colonies stations. Oh, I almost forgot, I also made a couple of contacts on 6 meters (NY1E in Maine and K4PTD in South Carolina) when I checked the band around lunch time and heard some activity. Now I’ve got a growing bunch of records to upload when LoTW comes back online and many others do too so the new system will immediately be in for a proper stress test. The digital confirmation process being down didn’t prevent my postal mail lady from dropping this actual QSL card in my mailbox today.
Turning the Calendar
The search for needed DX was a bust last night so I decided to pick off a handful of WWA stations. Seven contacts on two bands is good for 14 points. So far. I’d like to log at least twenty-five of them. This one will be a short run since the summer event only lasts a week while the winter version ran the entire month of January. I caught a note that Roger Smallwood, N8EKG became a silent key over the weekend. He was the President of Operations at R&L Electronics, a popular and longtime ham radio dealer in Hamilton, Ohio.
End of Month
We’ve arrived at the end of another month. Half the year has passed. If you consider the 4th of July as being halfway through the summer season, don’t blink, that’s coming up fast. I got back on the paddle this morning. Called CQ on 20 and 30 meters without getting a reply so I started looking for a few POTA stations. Snagged three of them, two on 40 and one on 20 meters. Will be on DX patrol later this evening. Band conditions are a little better, SSN:151 SFI:128 A:8 K:2 - but this perpetual pop-up thunderstorm season is keeping things noisy and I’m unhooking the cables whenever I leave the shack. Tired of that. C’mon autumn!
Field Day 2025
Well that was… different. CW for all occasions is typical at KE9V, so I sometimes use Field Day as an excuse to do phone. That’s how this year started, but just five contacts in I got bored and switched to digital. I was operating 1D from home, 100 watts, from the mains. I’ve never used the FT modes during this event. It was a first for me and I didn’t hate it once I figured out how to put the WSJT software into Field Day mode. I ended up putting fifty in the log in this configuration over a couple of hours when I decided to call it quits.