Well, session #2 of the Technician Class Operator Course went very well tonight. We had a new student join us so we now have nine enrolled in the class. Tonight we tackled Subelement T4 which is Radio and Electronic Fundamentals as well as Subelement T-9C which is feedlines, SWR and such. So as you can imagine we took every last minute of the three hours to cover it all! Everyone seemed to have a good grasp on this very important and somewhat technical portion of the course. I had an absolute blast teaching it. Kevin Bell was out of town this week but will be back next week to teach Subelements T3, T5, and T7. Steve Jonas (K4SDJ) was there to distribute some W5YI study software and Radio band charts. And Lester (KF4JBQ) showed up for a while to just hang out. We have a good group of students and things are going very well.
Picked up a Kenwood TS-440S HF Transceiver yesterday and am having a ball with it. Got the transceiver (which has a built in autotuner), a Kenwood 50 amp power supply, and a Kenwood SP-430 external speaker. I got it from another local HAM and it's in great shape. Beautiful old rig as you can see from the pictures. It's probably around 20 years old (haven't looked up the serial number yet) so the Kenwood logo about "Listen to the Future" up in the corner probably doesn't make much sense! I got it home last night, cleaned it up a bit, and put it on the air right away. First contact was on 40 meters with EA7GAK in Spain. Cranked it up again this morning after breakfast and was able to contact stations in Spain, Italy, Luxembourg, Lithuania, Germany, and Moscow. Rockin and Rollin!
Got a wonderful new piece of test equipment today. I picked up the MFJ-259B HF/VHF SWR Analyzer. Got tired of having to borrow one everytime I wanted to test a new antenna or troubleshoot an SWR problem. This should prove to be a very valuable tool. Found the best deal at Gigaparts. $239 with no tax and no shipping! Ordered on Tuesday and arrived on Thursday. Happy to loan it out if anyone needs to borrow it.
