I picked up this little radio, and am surprised at the performance. It's the Zhiwhis ZWS-701 from Amazon. It has digital tuning, SW 4.75-21.85mhz, WX 162.4-162.55mhz, AMBC 520-1710khz, and FMBC 64-108mhz. 1000ma lithium battery, 297 memories, Bluetooth and Thumb drive capability. The RX is pretty hot, too. This was about $43 shipped. Lots of fun! Here's a few photos...
Earlier in the year, I helped a friend, K4WGD, remove a tower from a location that will ultimately be reinstalled at his QTH. I finally got around to editing a zillion photos down to the basics. I'm the guy on the tower in these pics. It was a 110' commercial Motorola tower, very similar to a Rohn tower in design. There were several antennas, feed line, guy cables, anchors, turnbuckles, etc that all had to be removed. We also discovered the based had failed at some point in time, and it became very unstable below the lowest guy cables and temporary support had to be installed during the disassembly. My buddy was the ground crew, he ran the tractor, tied and untied parts, etc. Due to early summer storms popping up almost every day, it took the better part of the week to get it disassembled and clean up the site. These photos aren't in exact order, but you'll get the idea.
A friend gave me this Radio Shack HF wattmeter. It was originally intended for CB. I cleaned, touched up the face, and calibrated it. It's pretty darn accurate on power and SWR on 160-10 meters, and not bad on 6! Adding it to the shack :-)
This EuroCB rx preamp was a hamfest find by a friend. It didn't work, but wasn't a basket case. I replaced a busted gain pot, installed an external fuse holder and power cord, and tested. It worked great on 20, 17, 15, 12, and 10 meters. It can auto switch a 200w transmitter QSK. Not bad for a few bucks! Here's a few pics...
I had an old Daiwa CN-101 HF watt meter kicking around the shack with a bad meter movement. I had thought about tossing it out, but being the pack ratt I am, I tossed it on the shelf. While browsing the for sale bits on QRZ one day, I saw a person with a replacement meter for sale, for one they planned to repair, but never did. I bought it for $10 shipped, stuck it in, and back in service it is. It's not a bad little meter, and was certainly worth saving for $10! Here's a few pics...
We enjoy our Gazebo on the back deck. We've had it installed since around 2012. It has lighting, a ceiling fan, and a bluetooth receiver with speakers in each vertical support pole. This year, it stopped working. After a bit of investigation, I found the receiver board was destroyed from water contamination. A little searching on the web and I found a small bluetooth receiver with a built-in 5w amp for $6 (!!). I ordered that, and spliced it into the original speaker wiring. It required 5vdc, so I hacked in an old cell phone charger with 1a output at 5vdc, put it all in a plastic ziploc bag, and stuffed it into the post with the bag's zipper facing down to keep water out. She works like new, and this was a cheap fix! Here's a few photos...
