Was I crazy?

Last Saturday, a group of about 14 people got together to make power supplies for our ham radios. I was told that it would be easy, all you had to do was follow directions. I had been pricing power supplies on the Internet and found that the cheapest one we could buy was about $ 95.00. A friend of mine told me that you could make them for about $ 29.00 so I asked him how we could do that. He gave me the name of a man, he knew, that built them and he would probably be happy to help our group out. I called the man up and he agreed to help us. I reserved the multi-purpose rooms at the church and got the word out. We were told to bring some power tools like a drill, a soldering iron, screw drivers and pliers. He told us that it wouldn’t take but about 4 hours to do the job.

Saturday morning I went in at 8:30am. to set up some tables and chairs. The group was coming in at 9:00am. to start assembling the units. When Bro. Boyer came, he asked several of the men if they could help carry in supplies. He passed out, to each on of us, a little quart sized bag with nuts, bolts, screws, resisters, fuses and other items that I had never seen before. We picked up a plastic container and a thing that looked like a motor. There was also a small fan that we had to install. I took one look at this stuff and wondered what I had gotten us in to…This stuff was so over my head that you would need a pair of binoculars to find it. The men acted like they were let loose in a candy store, picking up parts and putting it together. The three women and I looked at each in astonishment. It turned out that the women were put on an assembly line installing the fans, cutting wires, doing some soldering and doing the easier stuff. I still felt like a duck out of water.

The time went by quickly and at 1:00pm. it was evident that we were no where near finished. Robert Riedel was the first one finished and he left around 4:00pm. Most of the people had working units after they were tested, but there were three that had too much voltage. They worked on those for several hours. Around 6:00pm. I started vacuuming the floor and trying to clean up. At 6:45pm. I told the men that I had to leave and they promised to clean up. I know one thing for sure, I’m not going to do that again….I even wonder if it was worth it to save $65.00.

I went home stressed out, so TF and I went out to dinner for our Saturday night date. We did a little grocery shopping on the way home and when we got home I could barely put away the groceries. I rested my head on a pillow on the couch and promptly fell asleep in my clothes. I woke up the next morning on the couch with a blanket over me.

Did I mention that 8 of us went together and purchased our ham radios? We ordered the IC-2200H Icom single band (2 meter) unit. It is a sturdy little guy that can be used as a home base unit or it can be used in your car as a mobile unit. We got a discount rate with a $ 20.00 rebate thru the end of September. What a deal. Next on the agenda we are purchasing some Arrow J-pole antennas. Once that is done we should be able to transmit! Yea!!! KE5KIO over and out.