Fellow hams, unite!

[Sandy G]

I looked into the ham scene down here a few years back-nice guys, for the most part, but not a one of 'em was into HF-It was all 10 meter, 220 & 440 stuff, & their radios were these teeny-tiny widdle things that were about the same size as an early-day cell phone...I started yakkin' about R-390As, SX-28s, HROs, EK-07s, & they just kinda gave me the fish-eye. Went to a "hamfest" in Knoxville years ago, & the only Tooob stuff there was some guy who'd looked like he'd cleaned out the Junk Hole in one of the labs at Oak Ridge Nat'l Lab- Bunch of junky old scopes, a tube sig gen or 2, some sad lookin' VTVMs...Junk. You MIGHT have been able to make one or 2 good scopes out of the 2 pickup loads of the stuff that was there...Maybe. Some dude wanted REAL bad to sell me a radio, IIRC, it was a lesser-model Hallicrafters, or maybe it was an NC-88 National. I did get an NC-125 at another "hamfest" I went to, It was absolutely, positively, swear-on-a-stack-of-Bibles GUARANTEED to work, of course, it didn't. Did after it went to see Terry, though. Anyhow, my experiences w/the local Ham scene has been less than stellar, maybe that is affecting me. They also-HERE- seem to be a rather insular & clannish lot, not really wanting to swap stories/lies/whatever about stuff. But maybe I oughta give 'em another chance...