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Old 11th Oct 2018, 2:42 pm   #36
G6Tanuki
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Join Date: Apr 2012
Location: Wiltshire, UK.
Posts: 13,953
Default Re: How much time do you get to work on sets?

I've got a half-acre veg. garden/orchard that needs curating, a large dog who expects a couple of hours of walks a day, firelogs to saw, a 160-year-old house to maintain.... and even though I no longer need to work I still find there aren't enough hours in the day.

Nowadays I restrict my radio-restoration activities to radios I'm actually going to _use_ on a regular basis; I'm not so interested in cosmetic/cabinet-related stuff but a radio that doesn't function at least as well as it did when new is a source of frustration. So, for example, I don't waste time on 'restuffing' capacitors because doing so won't improve the performance when compared to a direct replacement.

As to _using_ the radios, well, I generally try to spend a couple of hours a day operating on HF; longer if it's wet outside and/or if the ionosphere and sunspots are playing along. For example this morning I had a nice half-hour QSO on 14MHz with a guy in St.Petersburg. Later this evening you may find me on 5MHz giving my PRC320 a bit of exercise.

My next big radio-project is a Hallicrafters S27 which I acquired from a fellow forum member quite a few months back. It's been 'got at' [the output transformer's not the right one, neither is the S-meter] but I'm hoping I'll be able to restore it to functionality. I've even been loitering round radio-rallies acquiring a set of brand-new-in-WWII-military-box 1944-vintage Acorns for the front-end.
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