Last Saturday something told me to get on 60 meters. TRGHS. So I stepped out to the carport and tuned the doublet to 5.3 Mhz -- and I'm really glad I did. There was a lot of activity on the band, all very friendly. Channels 1 and 2 seem to be especially popular watering holes.
Channel 3 might be getting a bit more digital use, but a very interesting group called the "Moose and Squirrel Net" meets there at noon (east coast time) on Saturday on SSB phone. This group is kind of a spill-over from the Old Military Radio Net that meets early on Saturday morning on 3895 kHz AM. Because many of the old military radios can't tune on half kHz increments, the "Moose and Squirrel" group used channel 3 which is the only U.S. 60 meter channel on a whole integer kHz frequency (5357.0 kHz). Moose and Squirrel takes it name from the old Boris and Natasha Cold War cartoons that many of us watched as kids. Natasha Fatale and Boris Badinov. Cold War era military radios, get it? Good stuff. Many of the guys on the M&S net commented on how nice the uBITX sounded. I was running it through my .1kW CCI EB63A amplifier.
One of my nicest contacts was with Joe WA2EJT. He told me that he too has a uBITX. He said he bought the rig in part because of he liked the fact that Farhan was giving the work on the toroids to some ladies in Hyderabad who normally do sewing. Joe said he liked the look of the uBITX board so much that he decided to put his board on top of the chassis instead of inside it. That is exactly what I had done with my first BITX 40 module. See the pictures of Joe's rig.
Three cheers for the uBITX!
Boris, Natasha and "Fearless Leader"
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Al and I have our µBITX's mounted on a wood base, with a Lexan front panel. We will add a U-shaped cover when were done, mainly because we want to show our JackAl board inside the case.
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