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Tom Francis - SWSports Tom Francis - SWSports is offline
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First recorded activity by BoatBanter: Sep 2008
Posts: 2,326
Default Yo!! Wayne and Gene...

You guys will love this.

I put my Yaesu FT-900 up for sale on Craigslist - too many radios in
the office and I'm trying to clean out the stuff I don't use much
anymore.

So I get an email - guy wants to look at the radio this evening. Hey,
fine business - I'm just watching football anyway, come on over.

Guy shows up - really nice. Introduces himself - he just passed his
Extra exam and he's looking for a radio for him and his son who also
passed his General.

I didn't think much of it - congratulations, etc. We sat down at the
radio desk, I fired up the FT-900 and started showing him the
features.

The guy is looking over the front panel and he asked what AGC-F was. I
said it was a fast Automatic Gain Control. He asks me - "What's the
Automatic Gain Control do?"

Er.....

So I explained it, then he asked what the RF Power was.

Um....RF power? Hmmmm....

I was going to let him sign into whatever net was on 14.300 for a
radio check - showed him a little trick with the auto tuner to get the
lowest SWR spread over a couple of KHz.

I swear to you - he says "SWR? Isn't a higher SWR a good thing?"

Ok - at this point I'm getting a little suspicious, so I asked him how
long he had his license.

Since last Tuesday. Went from zero to Extra in one sitting. Seemed
quite proud of the fact that he had read all the license manuals and
question pools and passed - by one question.

I had mentioned to him that I had unlocked the transmitter so it could
be used across the WARC and marine spectrum so he asked me if he
could, in theory, use it as a broadcast transmitter on AM.

I decided that he wasn't getting my radio. He made me an offer, but I
turned him down flat and stuck to a ridiculous price.

I think he got the idea that he wasn't getting my radio. :)

Boy it sure ain't like it used to be.