Hello listers,

Here is my rant for the year.

I find sighted ham radio operators here in the Sacramento area totally
unhelpful.

I have four portable antennas that I'd like help assembling. The smaller and
larger Alexloop magnetic loop antennas. The Buddistick antenna and the
Ventenna, HFP antenna.

I'd love to get a Kenwood TMV-71A but I have no sighted help hooking up the
power supply to the rig. I have a 50% chance of hooking it up backwards and
blowing up the rig as I did with an Astron 2 meter rig many years ago.

The same goes for my Icom IC703 Plus. When I was on a trip recently to
Harrisburg, PA the stupid people from the TSA at the airport closed my power
cord that goes to the Astron power supply in the suitcase cutting completely
one side of the fused power cord. I bought a new cord from Universal Radio
but the same as above in the Kenwood applies. No sighted help to hook the
cord to the Astron power supply.

Since the Pacigficon convention my Yaesu FT817ND has gone nuts.

It will not take some frequencies that I send it with the Radio Mate keypad.

I don't know if the radio needs a complete reset or there is some sort of
fault in the keypad itself.

I'd also like some help ssetting up the menus on the Icom IC703 Plus. For
instance I can't speed up the speech board or set it to a higher volume.

I'm tempted to try the millennium qsyer on the Yaesu but am reluctant to do
so because I might not be able to set it up to operate with the IC703 Plus
again .

So I have all this qrp junk that's barely operable.

The only rig I have with some hope is a Kenwood TS480SAT. I have two high
power shortened dipoles for 20 meters on my balcony which have high swr.

Again no help with anyone with an antenna analyzer.

I have yet to make a contact with this rig on any band.

In summary, I'm disappointed in general with the Sacramento ham community.
It would probably gtake an hour of someone's time to come over and fix my
problems adjust radio menus and get me properly on the air.

The ARRL is nothing but a stupid self-serving non-helpful organization. Why
did I join as a life member?

I hope this is not the case for all parts of the country for general ham
radio helpfulness.

If it is, our hobby is truly in trouble.

I would welcome suggestions.

Merry Crhistmas from a browned off ham radio operator.

73,

Eric

KU3I