It has been literally a hundred years since I went to a Hamfest. I miss the pomp, circumstance and sheer adrenaline rush of finding some item that you thought had disappeared from existence. Summer is in full swing and time to find a Hamfest. For our UK friends the radio rallies are a 1st cousin to the US Hamfest. One of the best monthly Hamfests here in California was in the parking lot of TRW near LAX. If you didn't start shopping by 6AM, you would miss out on the good stuff. In the 1970's I went to a TRW event arriving prior to 6AM and at the 1st table I found one of those you will never find this ever deals. Some months earlier, I had purchased a used SBE-33 SSB transceiver which was in good shape but did not have the special and very rare DC to AC inverter that was sold to enable mobile operation. There it was and a $20 bill put my SBE-33 in the car operating 20M Mobile. Today you could buy a suitable inverter for less than that $2o bill at You know where. What would I l...
16 Slide Rules in a Glass Case The Slide Rule is as old as dirt dating back to 1622 and invented by an English Clergyman and Mathematician named William Oughtred. Any EE student of 1960's vintage, worth his salt, carried a K&E (In a Green Case) strapped to his belt... always at the ready. In the 1970's we saw the advent of the battery powered electronic calculator whose magic depended on those batteries not giving out at a critical time. The early Apollo astronauts carried slide rules. Three place accuracy on the slide rule could be achieved depending on how good you could squint... no batteries required. Many military weapons pre 1970 were designed using a slide rule. So, it is with our wonderful hobby where using simple tools it is possible build highly capable equipment without having Claude (Some AI Avatar) lurking over your shoulder. Prior to 2021 AI was just a bulge in some guy's undershorts but today it will put you out of your job. My sojourn with Pr...