Switched on 20 metres, tuned to the signal a few kHz away on the waterfall -- boom, a guy talking about his prostate. Living the amateur radio dream.

#Kundin: Meine Homöopathin hat gesagt, ich wäre bis zum Anschlag voll mit Quecksilber. Dann hat sie das homöopathisch ausgeleitet. Aber woran erkenne ich jetzt, dass es auch wirklich raus ist?
#DerApotheker: Ich sage es Ihnen, wie es ist: Sie sind einer Betrügerin aufgesessen. 🤷‍♂️

09.07.2020

@vk6flab @womble I own an FT-897 as well, mostly because I couldn't not own one, and was able to source the original optional mains PSU and ATU for it as well. The FT817, 857 and 897 were pretty much the holy trinity of rugged transportable radios. Still great radios today.

The 897 fell about a metre off my desk onto a hard floor recently. Not a scratch and it still works just fine.

Looking at my trusty FT-817 and wondering what the social media pundits would have said if they had been around then.

"LCD matrix display is almost illegible."
"Only 5 watts? POINTLESS."
"(racist joke about Japanese people having small fingers)"
"SSB on a QRP radio? Useless feature bloat!"
"No built-in long wire tuner is a showstopper. What are Yaesu thinking?"
"Not including (4 metres|220MHz) will kill this piece of junk."
"Yaesu are completely out of touch. Just not a serious radio."

@wd9ewk I stand corrected on this - serves me right for not doing my homework before making grand assertions. Thanks for the correction.

@va3db @wd9ewk Er, okay? I don't think anyone mentioned proprietary (well, patent-encumbered codecs) protocols.

@wd9ewk I missed out the important caveat that yes, I guess you could do it with less effort for short-range FM (or DMR) but your receiver would be pretty deaf and the results certainly wouldn't be usable for weak signals or SSB satellite operation, which is what people apparently wanted it for here.

Finding it quite tricky to believe how many people think that no full duplex on the FTX-1 is a show-stopper. Transmitting and receiving simultaneously on the same radio is hard and requires a lot of extra filtering that takes up space and costs a lot, which is why it’s never been seen on anything smaller than a base station radio. And transmitting and receiving simultaneously through the same antenna connector? Definitely no.

So your only choice if you want 2/70 full duplex is.. the IC-9700.

@MikeFromLFE Thanks for that - I enjoyed reading the post. 12 years after that I started French at secondary school and not only was La Rochelle one of the places that the textbook constantly mentioned but we also learned how to write politely to youth hostels to book accommodation!

@kconkas @g7kse I’m far enough away that they’ll have to use something more complicated than their local repeater to reach me so I’m probably safe. :) Happy to oblige once this issue actually arrives..

@womble @g7kse @kconkas It does impress me to see how many people despite their claims of 40 years in amateur radio or whatever seem to have learned absolutely nothing about radio since passing the RAE. Probably the same people who denounce "appliance operators". :)

@g7kse @kconkas (from my radio-related account this time) Problem is that the "strongly worded letter to the editor of RadCom" demographic doesn't often overlap with "people who would be inclined to call out stupid bullshit like this". But this needs to be called out.

The #rsgb must be trying a novel approach to attracting youth to #hamradio: printing conspiracy theory-ladden letters to the editor of #radcom 🙄 In this month's issue: global warming is just a hoax, and WiFi routers are, for some inexplicable reason, bad.

@scott @AF0AJ @KC8JC There was more hash on 20m yesterday afternoon than in the whole of the Netherlands. S5+.

@freyablekman Major railway stations which were built as cathedrals of travel, versus airports which were built to shove as many people through a pipeline as possible while extracting as much money as possible from their pockets. Vienna Airport isn’t terrible by airport standards, but Wien Hbf is fantastic. There’s no contest.

@stu @IU1KGS They sound like someone trying to run a bug at full speed after three double espressos.

@kn8cr (I try not to go on about it because I know the vast majority of Americans are not like these nutcases, including the majority of Americans who own firearms, and stereotyping is bad. America.. well, it just deserves better, and I know it'll happen someday, but.. urgh, what do you do?)

@kn8cr Yeah, I didn't mention the fact that even here in a country with relatively liberal firearms laws (i.e., it's possible to get one at all) anyone who said a tenth of the stuff I've heard from that crowd in public or put a sign outside their house warning of "armed response" would immediately be considered psychologically unsuitable to own firearms and their guns would be taken away very quickly :)

I mean, it stands to reason.

@VE3RWJ @va3db It's only a repeater when it has something to repeat. Other times, it's just a really good listener.