[skip_region]

Love this article. About once a year, I’ll buy an eBay tube radio from someone local. I’ll fix it on up since the tubes are usually good and all that needs to be replaced are the sad wax caps. Maybe a little realignment as well since I have it open.

I then give it back to the seller who usually is excited about having it work again. Once in a while I will put the stories on eham.net.

If for any reason the radio breaks, going to send the author an email to offer to fix it for free. All it takes are about $3 worth of mouser capacitors in my experience.

[dylan604]

So you run a charity repair service? You buy something from someone, fix it, then give it back to the person you bought it from? That's a very noble hobby.

[skip_region]

The latter. I don’t really consider it a charity since the people could easily pay for it (plus tube radios are so simple to fix). However, upon receiving it back, they are quick to realize the missing memories they might have given up.

Selfishly I do it to keep up my soldering skills when none of my amateur radio related radios need servicing. Plus putting a little good karma out there never hurt anyone.

[0ct4via]

73 to you, Sir.

[codetrotter]

And o7 as well :D (although o7 is IRC speak, not ham speak :P)

[chrisweekly]

73?

[tejtm]

It is a salutary morse code "prosign" on amateur radio

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosigns_for_Morse_code

edit: I may be overstating that the token is precisely a prosign.

But if so it will be one of the closely related early electrical communication codes.

https://hamradioprep.com/what-does-73-mean/

[et-al]

It's proto-pager code: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_signal

https://www.pagercodes.com/common-pager-codes.html

[jimnotgym]

'Best wishes' but in morse it takes less time to write 73!

[draz]

This is heartwarming to read. Would you consider recording and uploading videos of the repairs to YouTube?

[skip_region]

Here is a video I took a while ago: https://youtu.be/WDuR87r8nWs

Bought it from a person who lived about 20 miles away. He grew up with it in his grandmas house. Bought it, fixed it and returned it back to him.

[jo6gwb]

Appreciate you posting that!