On 14 Jun 2005 03:37:15 -0700, "Cliff" wrote:

Remember back then there was not the cussing and name calling as what
goes on now. In ham there is not near the abusive crud going on as on
the CB freq's. Don't know why but it is there.

I wish that we didn't have to use a 10,000 watt kicker, even with a
durned good antenna, to talk to the end of the block.

Hell, we were glad when we could do that with .1 watt, and a 36"
telescopic. Of course there wasn't as much QRN on the band and those
weak signals could travel farther before being lost in the (lower)
ambient noise.


And I put it in
about the good antenna cause if you have a radio that won't get out
without a kicker, it, once put in front of a kicker, all kinds of
pitiful noises come out of it. It makes it hard to understand them and
they keep others that have decent talking sets from enjoying what could
be a really decent hobby for the price.

Human beings (especially males) tend to look at life as a series of
challenges or competitions. Think about sports, NASCAR, etc. There's
an almost irresistible drive to be the best you can be at something,
or at least better than the next guy. On CB, that sense of competition
is what drives people to run gobs of excessive power. It's not that
they actually expect to talk consistently over 200 miles. They just
want to be the only one heard in a 10 mile radius when they key up.
The big dog as it were. Being a "Mud Duck" is akin to being a physical
wimp.

Dave
"Sandbagger"

On Wed, 15 Jun 2005 06:48:24 -0400, Dave Hall wrote:


Dave,

Do you recoomended a decent Freq counter I can get on ebay for aound $40? They
have a ton of older HP and BK Precisions. I had a Fluke 1900A, but it died on
me, and I am looking to replace it.



Well, as a matter of course, you get what you pay for. To me $40 is in
the "recreational user" category. For true lab precision quality test
equipment, you're going to pay a lot more (Unless, of course, it's 30+
years old, and then I'd have my doubts about calibration).

Well, most of these are bench quality that have been removed from labs that have
been shut down. For how often I have to do it, it doesn't pay to buy a $200
counter when it's going back in the closet after alignment.

I have a Fluke counter, which I obtained about 8 years ago. At the
time I got it, the calibration was about a year old. While the
optional heated crystal oven high precision timebase is fairly stable,
I'm sure there's been some drift in the last 8 or 9 years.

So even if you get a "Lab quality" counter, unless the seller can
provide calibration traceability, you still don't know how accurate it
might be.


I used to do calibrations, years ago on research instruments that was traceable
to NIST, and NBS before that. At that time, traceability was at least $100 per
piece. I don't see how it would be cost effective to get a counter with this
traceability that could easily run you twice the cost of a new radio.

Vinnie S.

Galaxy freq counters should not be called "frequency counters" and
should be referred to as what they truly are,,,,, more of a freq
"display" than true counter.

On Tue, 14 Jun 2005 01:25:33 GMT, "Landshark" wrote:


As long as I paid my bill, they allowed me to go to class.
So what? Are they going to give you a degree because you paid your bill?
Were
by pass the class. you allowed to sit in on advanced classes without
passing earlier
pre-requisites, just because you paid your bill?

Agreed. In 76 when I was at college, for one computer class I had to take
trig or pass a test to take the class.



Vinnie S.

You were answering Guy, correct? You used my post as a qoute, I hope you
know that I agree with you. I'll take resonable arguements, like the one
with Guy
any day of the week over the BS, the others have tried spew.


I was answering Guy. I do agree with some of the things he says. But I don't
agree that you don't learn from preparing for the tests. I learned quite a bit
just from the answer pool book.

Vinnie S.

Every time I pass a cemetary, I feel like I'm apartment hunting .... )

LOL! That's funny! The problem with this is I haven't seen one with a
good view.... ;-)

Folks are just dying to get in!

Are cemetery fences to keep the living out, or the dead in?

The keyboard and playgirl magazine are mopathetics friends

You mean before the group's owners, the AKC, prohibited ebay auctions
and ratted out keyclown amps and illegal radios,

On Wed, 15 Jun 2005 23:56:06 -0400, Scott in Baltimore
wrote:

Every time I pass a cemetary, I feel like I'm apartment hunting .... )

LOL! That's funny! The problem with this is I haven't seen one with a
good view.... ;-)

Folks are just dying to get in!

Are cemetery fences to keep the living out, or the dead in?

Yes.

Dave
"Sandbagger"

On Wed, 15 Jun 2005 09:10:40 -0400, Vinnie S.
wrote:

On Wed, 15 Jun 2005 06:48:24 -0400, Dave Hall wrote:


Dave,

Do you recomend a decent Freq counter I can get on ebay for aound $40? They
have a ton of older HP and BK Precisions. I had a Fluke 1900A, but it died on
me, and I am looking to replace it.



Well, as a matter of course, you get what you pay for. To me $40 is in
the "recreational user" category. For true lab precision quality test
equipment, you're going to pay a lot more (Unless, of course, it's 30+
years old, and then I'd have my doubts about calibration).

Well, most of these are bench quality that have been removed from labs that have
been shut down. For how often I have to do it, it doesn't pay to buy a $200
counter when it's going back in the closet after alignment.

Like I said before, accuracy costs money. How accurate do you want to
be?

I have a Fluke counter, which I obtained about 8 years ago. At the
time I got it, the calibration was about a year old. While the
optional heated crystal oven high precision timebase is fairly stable,
I'm sure there's been some drift in the last 8 or 9 years.

So even if you get a "Lab quality" counter, unless the seller can
provide calibration traceability, you still don't know how accurate it
might be.


I used to do calibrations, years ago on research instruments that was traceable
to NIST, and NBS before that. At that time, traceability was at least $100 per
piece. I don't see how it would be cost effective to get a counter with this
traceability that could easily run you twice the cost of a new radio.

I was going to bring that up. The cost of calibration is often more
than what you paid for the used instrument itself, unless you have
access to a cal lab and can do it yourself. Once in a while I'll sneak
one or two of my pieces into the pile at work when we send a bunch out
to cal. But the bottom line here is that it makes little sense to buy
a lab quality counter for its inherent accuracy, and not have it
recently calibrated.

But these are the issues you have to face. If you want something that
is "Dead on, no argument, last word on the subject" accurate, you will
have to pay for it. If, on the other hand, you are content with being
"close", a $40 counter will fit the bill. The choice is yours.

I get a kick out of guys on the air (SSB) arguing over who's on
frequency and who isn't. One guy will tell another to tune to him
because he's "a bit off". The other guy will respond that if there's a
difference, it must be the first guy's radio, because his "XYZ brand"
is "dead on", and it goes from there.

In the grand scheme of things, does it really matter? As long as
everyone has the ability to synchronize their transmit with their
receive clarifier, and can tune to each other, where exactly they are
becomes irrelevant.

But you can see how the wide variation of quality test equipment and
radio drift can make it nearly impossible to bring everyone's transmit
frequency to the same exact point (Within 100 hz). That's why I don't
like "locked on" transmit clarifiers.

Dave
"Sandbagger"

On Wed, 15 Jun 2005 16:03:51 -0400, (I
AmnotGeorgeBush) wrote:

Galaxy freq counters should not be called "frequency counters" and
should be referred to as what they truly are,,,,, more of a freq
"display" than true counter.

I would agree. They are also known (At least on the earliest models)
to generate "hash" noise, which you can hear on the receive if it's
quiet.

I certainly wouldn't use the built-in counter on a CB radio as any
source of accuracy.

Dave
"Sandbagger"