A bit of Station GAS at the K9ZW Shack

GAS is sometimes defined as “Gear Acquisition Syndrome” or other descriptives to describe how one somehow keeps acquiring more radio gear.

I’m a learner when it comes to tube radios – boat anchors – and had been looking for a small transceiver to get started.

From Kurt WA9KMB I was able to acquire a Swan 350 with its XC117 Power Supply.  A couple pictures of this type of gear I grabbed off the web are:

Swan 350 Transceiver

Swan XC117 Power Supply

Again thank you to the hams who put pictures up on the web, appreciated as I didn’t grab the Swap.QTH.com photos before they came down.

The Swan is pretty basic and radio that is noted to need to be steadied by being allowed to fully warm up.  Kurt WA9KMB certainly keeps his gear in fine shape and has helped encourage me in getting my feet wet with tube rigs.  Making the acquisition work smoothly was an opportunity that my eldest Tom KC9JGD had to pick up the radio & power supply in the course of his travels.

My good friend George W9EVT has for a few years been encouraging me to acquire a Collins station.  I’ve been putting this off as I know less about Collins than I would need to know to make such an investment.  I know the method to George’s plans to see I get a good start with Collins gear, as in the course of other trades/swaps and just out of his kindness he has seen to it that I have a start with a Collins 75S1 and Speaker.  Again borrowing a photo, here is what this receiver looks like:

Collins 75S1 Receiver

I’ve been trying to find a matching 32S1 (2 or 3) Transmitter with its power supply, which look like this:

Collins 32S1 Transmitter

So far I have not found a 32S that either was high risk (untested, or “all sales final” with weak descriptives like “loads on the one band I tested, but I didn’t put it on the air…” or higher priced minty collector radios.)  Patience I guess.

GAS has also lead to a couple tool acquisitions – nothing expensive actually, just a new Dymo Labeler that will emboss metal tape labels and a very neat tech’s pocket screwdriver (I bought a couple to give one each to the boys).

Now to get on the air with the Swan….

73

Steve

K9ZW