Author: jaythurbershow

Lots of people ask me, “I just bought a vintage radio” or guitar amp or record player or hi-fi or whatever, and they want to know if they can just plug it in and turn it on. It depends on your tolerance for fire.

Old-time radios are full of capacitors (sometimes called “condensers”) — components that store a small electrical charge for brief periods of time. Nowadays, they’re made of mylar and synthetic material, but through the ’50s and early ’60s, many of them were made of wax paper. When one of them fails, you’re likely to notice it first with your nose.

If you don’t feel comfortable working on electronics, best to find someone to check out that classic Fender amp or Harmon-Kardon tuner before you plug it and damage it.

Denise is sporting her Kappa Delta letters here.

This idea was sent to me by a CQ reader. Hearing from readers is one of the things I like best about contributing to the magazine. (I’m sure not doing it for the money.)

Anyone involved in a hobby knows that part of the fun is sharing it with your friends and family. For amateur radio buffs, “hamfests” are combination swap-meets, bull-sessions and conventions with guest speakers and sometimes educational opportunities.

Although some clubs held “virtual” hamfests on Facebook or Zoom, it sure was great to get back to holding events in person.

In reality, the first few hamfests that I attended were somewhat sparse. I think folks were still nervous about being exposed to large crowds of people for fear of contracting COVID-19 — and who can blame them?

This is not based on a real incident, and the person to whom I’m talking is not based on any bosses, past or present. But when everyone was working from home during the lockdown, I did occasionally questions from other people like, “What is all of that crazy stuff behind you?” Ironically, lots of people ignored the radio equipment but were most interested instead in a typewriter and a land-line phone that I had in my home office.

This was actually a reprint from a cartoon that originally ran in Popular Communications magazine in 2013. I hate using a rerun — especially since I’m only committed to do one cartoon per month — but was pressed for time and we decided that most of the CQ audience hadn’t seen it in Pop’Comm anyway.

And yeah, this is another cartoon based on real life experience. “Don’t throw that away, I can fix it!”

My wife is a proud member of Kappa Delta sorority. You’ll notice she’s holding a KD mug.

Every town used to have at least one store geared to whatever your favorite hobby is — electronics, model building, quilting — but Amazon and other online retailers have killed most of them. Several longtime staples in the electronics hobby closed their doors in recent years. I think the closing of Universal Radio in Worthington, Ohio, triggered this cartoon.

This is one of those cartoons that depends on being part of the “in” crowd and knowing a bunch of ham radio terminology, such as “software-defined radio” (basically a “virtual” radio that runs on a laptop or desktop) and knowing about Gordon West (“Gordo” is a colorful longtime ham radio writer and educator who is a very popular speaker on the hobby circuit, no pun intended) and Diamond Antennas.

These “CQ Predicts” cartoons (which is an occasional series) also depend on remembering The Amazing Criswell, the phony psychic who regularly appeared on talk shows through the 1970s.