Today I want to cover my Ham Radio plans for this year. When I worked for a living, I often reflected on the saying: If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail.
This saying has given me pause to reflect on things I would like to do with the ham radio hobby in 2026. For certain, the building of another SSB radio is off the table. However, one thing for certain is to work on antennas.
My Mosley Tri-Band beam has proven to be a piece of crap, and I heartily recommend never buy a Mosely Antenna! It worked for one year and died. I put no more than 600 watts into the beam, and yet it is rated for legal limit. I suspect trap failure, and a new set of traps is >$300. Buying a new set of traps would not insure a working antenna. Even when it worked it was marginal at best.
For about $800 I could install a multiband Hex Beam, but I would have to get a lot of help to do that as I don't climb ladders anymore.
Another goal is to continue the purge of commercial ham gear. The lot #1 sale was a huge disaster as I had only three emails, zero interest and no best offers. I am now happy to report that more than a dozen commercial rigs are resting deep in a land fill somewhere. I didn't really do that but found someone to take them of my hands for free. They even picked them up!
The Collins and Drake stuff will be way over-priced and put on eBay. Eventually they will sell. I happen to have three KWM-1's and only 1250 were built. I also have some more serious radios like Yaesu and Ten Tec that will grace the pages of eBay sold as is for a high price.
That will get me down to less than 10 boat anchors.
I hope to shift the blog to almost all political commentary as it affords me an opportunity to vent my frustrations at being near the EOL, yet we have a terrible political situation that will take several generations to fix.
There is but a small number of individuals who daily read this blog and certainly I am no match for a YL who got an Extra Class License in 8 Days, has 5000 You Tube followers and 23K views of her 1st you tube video.
Our hobby has completely shifted focus to contests and operating and there is no place for the real ham radio consisting of scratch building stuff, understanding how things work and advancing the technology. Time to get off and/or change the stage!
Them that know can make things go, but then they become obsolete and fade away.
73's
Pete N6QW
