A recent conversation with Des G4UHZ prompted me into writing this post about the changing ways of today’s Radio Amateur. For those who are wondering what a Boat Anchor is, in radio terms all vintage electronic valve equipment becomes encompassed with the term because it is a heavy piece of equipment with large transformers and tied with rope is suitable for mooring a boat. This is theoretical and I am pleased to say that vintage equipment it is not normally used for this purpose.

This post is not about restoration, but more on the loss of essential skills that are dying out because of the way that amateur radio changed. Today most radio equipment is digitized and computer controlled all squeezed into a small black box that makes it impossible for the normal amateur to repair and is generally sent back to the manufacturer for repair.

Today more and more radio amateurs are becoming operators and although the terms on the radio license also state it is for experimentation and self training, this part is being ignored. We are losing the ability to repair our own equipment and the skills used for this are disappearing, the self satisfaction of bringing a radio back from the dead is no longer being felt by the majority of radio amateurs.

Information is readily available on the internet and search engines can be your best friend, if you have a radio or any other equipment you would like to find out more about and try and get the manual for then you could be lucky. You will find that someone somewhere has already done what you are looking to do and a mass of information will be available to download. A typical search for “boat anchor” turned up the Boat Anchor Manual Archive

More information on this topic will be published soon