I got a neat package in the mail today. It was a copy of the magazine
"Radioaficionados," published by the U.R.E, the Spanish Radioamateur Union.
This is the kind of thing that really gets me going: reading the ham mags
from other places on the planet.
I used to have a friend who somehow ended up with a subscription to the DARC,
the German ham club, so I got a lot of practice reading people complaining
about how DL/DM/D-whatever calls were not DX any more. Must have been the
sunspot maxima back then, maybe. I also had a chance once to read the NRRL
(Norwegian RRL) magazine. Even wrote some stuff for it.
What I get out of these mags, more than anything else, is a sense of what's
important in other places. Kinda like that article that was in one of the
yankee mags a while back, the article about ham radio on some island in the
Indian Ocean. Very stark reminder that we gringos have it pretty easy when it
comes to getting stuff to play with and having stuff that works.
Makes me wish I had a winning lottery ticket. But that's a two-way-er here.
If you look at the prices of the gear and compare to what we gringos pay, ol'
ham radio turns into a very expensive game. Cushcraft R7000 costs 94,000
Pesetas (Pts.) A 3-500Z (yeah, I know, QRO) is 35,000 Pts. Hell, the CD
callbook is 5,500 Pts. And a used IC720 w/ autotuner &c is 80,000 (I'd guess,
using the abreviations) (Pts). Makes me glad I got all my spending on ham
radio over with when I was broke and young and stupid.
73
Nils
WB8IJN &c
[
QRP-L Archive |
]
[
1993 |
1994 |
1995 |
1996 |
1997 |
1998 |
1999 |
2000
]