Yet Another Moan!
I seem to be heading down that road again where things are just not good at the moment, things have been building up a bit it seems. Pain at present is just through the roof, and my Ham Radio situation is not going to plan as ever, especially with me losing my 80m dipole this week. Sleep is totally messed up, and on top of this my e-mail is not working, my ISP’s support is crap, and I just cannot seem to get an answer from them regarding why its not working, so I am basically going through a month in hell which I would not mind as at least it would be warm.
The Pain Level
I have been living with a lot of pain now for ages, imagine a constant pain spreading across the shoulders, enough to shed the odd few tears when I can hide it, but it’s like being in a constant nightmare and just hammering on the back of my shoulders and just not giving up, it’s just really annoying I suppose but normally I can put it to the back and not think about it, at the moment it’s just hammering constantly night and day and at the point where I can’t turn over again without it screaming at me or just reminding me that I am not dead just yet!
The Doctors at the Hospice are great, I am on fentanyl patches that take off the edge of the pain, and I am drinking Morphine like it is a nice cold lager on a hot summer’s day, but still its knocking at the door.
I just wish I could have a good night’s sleep, stay awake for the entire day, watch a good film and at the least have what is a semi-normal day in the world of normal. Yeah right!
Antenna Fun
I have had a few good antennas up at the house, my most recent is the Hari 160m Windom that is great, one of my oldest and still working antennas has been a 80 dipole that has always been great, worked perfectly and up until now has been a good alternative to the Windom. But this week it decided to give up the ghost, just when I could do with it as I was putting to bed the last of the Linear AMP UK Linears and I was hoping to start fixing a couple of MFJ Dummy Loads that are being annoying.
It is just good timing at present, I have for what seems to be a whole year trying to save up for a new toy, having got rid of a lot of the radio’s that I was not using and did not care for, I have been trying to afford a radio that was offered to me quite a while ago which I doubt is still available anyway, so I presume that I will need to save up now for a new one, which again is good timing. It seems that I never get a break at present. I have always wanted to try out a Kelemen Multiband Dipole, but they are so expensive, and I was always thinking that as the scaffolding is up I could always replace it with a Vertical, SteppIR being the obvious choice, and MFJ do a much cheaper alternative, but these are still way out of my price ranges, so it looks as though I will either replace it with a cheap Dipole or a W3DZZ dipole, and even this annoys me these days, half the reason these bought wire antennas fail is because they are made cheaply, even a so called heavy duty antenna is rated at just 1000W, I do not ever want to transmit at stupidly high power, after all most of the time I am transmitting at 20W into a linear that is set to 350W, that way everything is just ticking over nicely, it would just be nice to purchase a dipole that does not have a Balun rated at 1000W that clearly will not handle more than 300W at a push, I hate that when you open up these Balun’s these days and look at what wire they have used, most fall so short of what is rated, and when you look at the wires used for the elements, you just know that any good wind will just snap the puny wire that has been used. This is why I go for the largest rated antenna that I can find, in that way at least if it states 2000W on the tin then it should hold up for a few years.
Anyway, this still means that things are on hold again.
My ISP.
I have paid a small fortune to my ISP over the last 20+ years, and for most of that time it has done the trick, and even though I could get a much cheaper deal, even from the same ISP, its always been the fact that at the moment it has been working, so why mess it up? But now it is not working, the hosting of all the websites I manage is working fine, it’s the blummin e-mails on my main site that is failing me, and for some reason the total lack of support is really getting to me at present. I really would not mind but I has been like this now for 3 weeks, and support has been less than helpful, they seem to check the support system about once a week, and even after trying loads of things and taking and sending loads of screen captures, I still cannot get the problem sorted out, and the more that I test the more I find that it is not my issue, especially as I cannot send using my iPhone as well. Just bloody annoying.
Why Can you not just buy a good 1500W Dummy Load?
I am presently trying to fix 2 MFJ-267 Power Meter/Dummy Load that is apparently rated at 1500W Max, but the internal wiring and the dummy load itself is more like 300W Max and not 1500W, I was given two of these by a friend that are both dead, nothing burnt out but after testing his Linear at just over 1000W they have, decided to go bad, looking inside it is pitifully not up to handling 1500W, but you try to find a good Dummy Load these days, I know that at present we are rated at 400W Max, but if you work on a Linear you need to test the appliance out fully even if it is never going to run at its Max
The Quest for a New Radio
Since coming back from Clatterbridge I have wanted to just geta radio that does not need a lot of work to operate correctly, I have had and got rid of two Elecraft’s (the K3 and the KX3), the Icom IC-7300 with the Panadapter Module Fitted), not got rid of, as in I gave them away. All that I want is a radio hat fits me, and in my current state the only radios that I like seems to be the old ones, that said I know this time that what I want is the FTDX-10. My reason for hating the IC-7300 is quite a long list, the lack of a Video Port is quite high, and closely followed by its size, it is a bloody toy radio really! A second USB port would have been useful, I just never felt that I liked it, and after basically using it to keep my curtain to the shack open I did not see any point in keeping it so I gave it away, it had no emotional reason to keep it like a lot of my radios, so with a quick boot I sent it on its way. The K3 was a great radio, but with Elecraft stopping production the chance to obtain add-ons was non-existent, I tried to get a P3 at a reasonable cost and I wanted the second receiver and the IF Input and a Digital Voice board and maybe a transverter but everything was no longer made and when you sore it available, the costs were just stupid, listed by greedy individuals that just wanted money, so that had to go. The KX-3 was possibly the best radio I have ever owned, everything that a K3 had but in a portable box, but sadly, again, thanks to Elecraft not caring about it’s older radios and not being able to get hold of parts I decided to let it go when someone offered me £300 for it, my thoughts all along have been – its money towards the FTDX-10. All well and good, but things always seem to get in the way and funds go to pay off bills, and sadly for me the quest for a FTDX-10 is stills miles away
I should sell off a lot of this gear but I really do not like selling stuff, everything that I have got rid of is stuff that I either have no interest in using or stuff that does not need to hold on to because it does not mean anything for me, I will never part with the Drake gear that I got from Bob or Douglas, or the old radio belonging to an old friend long gone now, but I still have a lot of gear here that I need to pass on some day, I still have two large and heavy, totally new and never opened Beko HLV-523 and HLV-770 Linears that I keep tripping up on, I was given them ages ago by a friend that never used them, I might just break then down for parts someday just for the fun of it then up them on eBay to see what they get, that said I hate eBay after having a few bad experiences on it. Every time I move something I find another old bit of kit though, one day I will get rid of the kit, hopefully once the nipper has moved out and I can get the room to move a load of boxes out of the next build at this never-ending project that I live in.
I suppose as I am moaning about everything I might as well start moaning about how I feel. For me each day is totally different, one day I can be as healthy as anyone, well except for my legs and a feeding tube sticking out of my stomach, the next day I can be totally out of it, my head does not know where I am, my sleep is totally messed up, almost gone nocturnal, but either way, every morning is the same, I am fighting the feeling of wanting to throw up, the flehm in the mouth is just horrible, it covers my teeth and you can pick off large chucks with a tooth pick, if I had saliva like most people then this would never be a problem, I try to eat something now and then but nothing tastes right when it does taste of anything, most of the time it tastes of cardboard so I just do not bother trying something when asked as it is just easier to do so. As far as getting better, I don’t think that is something I will be doing any time soon, I suppose when your told that you have cancer you kind of know that you never get over it, especially after I was told that I was totally clear and then 6 months later I was told that it was not only back but its spread so I do not believe them now, especially after the last time the consultant called me he told me that it had cleared up on my left had side of my throat which I thought was great as it was the right hand side that my lymph nodes were infected and was swollen and pushing on my throat. The treatment that I am on at present is pretty good, every three weeks I get an IV and a good sleep, normally followed by a couple of bad days and then I get the roller coaster of good and bad, it seems like a never ending trip, but hopefully it will give me a few weeks yet, Now I take each day as it comes, I fight depression a lot here, and most days are low ones, I came off Faceache recently because I got fed up seeing posts from everyone going on holidays and cruises, we I cannot not even afford one good radio, so anything such as a trip to the Maldives is so out of reach. Life is a shit and then you die…
Last Updated : 27th November 2023
