I like to look through the ads and classified ads in the back of ham radio magazines and find items that I haven’t seen before. Since I just re-subscribed to CQ Magazine, I thought I’d scan the ads there. They call their classified ad section “ham shop.”
Breadboard Radio. Breadboard Radio sells a couple of small kits including the Splinter QRPp Receiver/Transmitter ($55), the Toothpick Audio CW Filter/Amp ($25), and the Sawdust Regen Receiver ($25). One cool thing about these kits is that you get a base onto which the PC board mounts. The audio filter or the regen receiver might make a good first kit.
MaineStore.Com. Name tags, belt buckles, coffee mugs, Christmas ornaments, and more, all personalized with your callsign are available from MaineStore.Com.
QSL Cards From the Past. W8JYZ has built a collection of more than 43,000 QSL cards dating back to the 1920s, and he’s scanned many of them and put them online. As far as I can tell, he’s doing this just to preserve our ham radio history. This is a great website. There are a lot of QSLs from stations whose callsigns spell words, like the one at right.
One thing that I found kind of odd is that a couple of the ads there contained links that no longer worked, including www.hamradioprints.com and www.vintagehamshack.com. I guess the proprietors of these websites paid for their ads in advance, but have since gone out of business.
Leave a Reply