Son of the packrat
By Ken Neubeck, WB2AMU
 Sooner or later, every Ham comes
to the realization of what they are and how they fit into the hobby. Some
may realize that they are diehard DX or contest operators while others
are into things like packet radio or VHF work. I cannot deny the fact
that I am a packrat. Actually, I am the son of a packrat and I merely
inherited those packrat traits. Being a packrat is not a character trait
you can control, it is something that was always meant to be. Packrats
are born and not made. As they say, you can't change the spots on a leopard;
well, the same thing applies to being a packrat. You cannot change what
you are.
There are two types of people in the world: those who throw
junk out and those who collect it. The latter group is affectionately
known as the packrats or unaffectionately known as junk collectors. The
packrat behavior is particularly highlighted in the Ham radio hobby because
of high visibility type events such as flea markets. The early roots of
the hobby steeped with the accomplishments of the experimenters who homebrew
much of their equipment by scrounging parts. Packrat behavior was originally
a major attribute of the Ham personality.
I grew up in a natural packrat environment where my father,
Ray, W2ZUN, had the basement filled with all kinds of gadgets and radio
equipment along with spare parts. The basement featured a number of Command
set surplus radios converted for Amateur Radio use. There were parts everywhere
along with piles of data books and schematics. My father had this excellent
knack of understanding how each electronic component worked and was tinkering
with electronics since his teenage years. Growing up, I thought it was
natural to have a basement filled with radio parts. My father had a number
of packrat friends whom we visited such as Van, W2OQI, who probably had
every radio or homebrew design ever built at one time in his basement.
The word museum seems appropriate to describe this.
The packrat curse did not bite me right away. When I got
my Novice license in 1971, I originally got in the hobby in order to make
contacts and exchange QSL cards. My first setup was a packrat's delight,
however, as I used a surplus command set transmitter pushing out twenty
watts and a timeless HRO receiver for 80 and 40 Meter operation. I occasionally
built some matching coils and tuners but did not stray much beyond that.
 Part of the packrat mentality was that you
built your own equipment rather than buy it. Sometimes this philosophy
could be expanded to where you could be allowed to buy used gear and work
on restoring it into working condition. But to buy new equipment? This
went against the grain of being a packrat. However, even this mentality
could be taken to the point of being very ridiculous. I have seen people
struggle to use really out-of-place equipment to go on some bands rather
than shell out a few hundred dollars for something halfway decent. These
people do have money but they are trapped in a philosophy that transcends
the average packrat. There is the case of a packrat on Long Island who
goes scrounging at 5 a.m. through the garbage left on the curb for pickup.
This guy found a printer but no manual, so of course he knocked on the
owner's door at 5 a.m. to a chorus of profanity that was captured on the
packrat's radio which was an open mike on the local repeater!
Most packrats are a little bit more balanced than this as
they will buy new equipment on occasion, but they still get the biggest
thrill out of making a pile of random parts from the junk box work in
a circuit. Many of the avid QRP operators are also packrats since the
two philosophies overlap. You really can't be a true QRP operator if you
have not built a QRP rig from scratch - operating a commercial rig at
QRP power with a Bird wattmeter is not in the true spirit of a diehard
QRPer! There is one line most packrats will not cross, and unless they
really have to, they will not buy commercially made antennas. They will
generally build their own antennas using whatever material they have on
hand in accordance with handbook calculations.
The packrat's Nirvana is the flea market. It's here where
he meets his fellow packrats and they compete to find the best bargain
on anything related to radio. One will notice after attending a few flea
markets that the heaviest trading occurs at the beginning and at the very
end of the flea market. When a car or truck pulls in loaded with stuff,
there will be at least a half a dozen packrats waiting to make bids on
a desired piece of gear before it even gets out of the vehicle! I remember
one flea market where my partner sold over $200 worth of stuff before
any of it was unloaded from the van! Then things slow down during the
middle of the flea market until the end when people are selling at incredible
bargains so that they don't have to take the stuff home! Often, someone
will leave a pile of stuff on the ground when they leave so that a whole
group of packrats will scream, "Free stuff!" and pick out goodies
for nothing. The conflicts between buyers and sellers are the things that
legends are made of in packrat lore.
Of course, the ultimate Amateur Radio flea market is the
Dayton Hamvention. I finally had the fortune to visit it in 1998 with
my father, fulfilling a life-long dream. The sheer size of Dayton is mind
boggling when seeing it the first time. Hams pack the hotels as much as
40 miles away for the three day event. Many a packrat's heartbeat has
increased just from the mere mention of the word "Dayton."
 The
road to becoming a full fledged packrat may vary among different individuals.
In my case, I really did not get into the building aspect of the hobby
and take full advantage of radio flea markets in my early Ham days until
I joined an electronic company in 1987. Prior to that I worked a number
of years for an aircraft company. All of a sudden, I had to get smart
in electronics as part of my job and took a number of electronic courses.
This gave me the push into building simple devices for musical instruments
and QRP transmitters for Amateur Radio. This gave me the push towards
getting my Extra class license in 1988. Access to parts was excellent
as many junk parts were available not only in the trash bins of my company,
but also in the dumpsters of adjacent companies in the industrial park
where I worked.
It was in this company that I met the undisputed King of
the Pack Rats, Fred Franke, WB2NFO. If you needed a part as well as a
description, he was sure to have it somewhere in his basement as well
as knowing everything about it. He spent so much time at flea markets
and looking for junk parts, he had no time to get on the air. One of the
biggest hauls we were involved with was when a hybrid manufacturer moved
out of the industrial park and left behind all sorts of switches, transistors,
Bud boxes and circuit boards. The feeling was similar to that of the buccaneers
looting a cargo ship in the Caribbean. It was a full week of ecstasy for
us when searching after work to find new goodies. I even made a few bucks
selling some transistors and capacitors to a surplus parts supplier.
As stated before, packrats are born and not made. Sometimes
it may take a few years for the urge to collect parts to build something
shows up. The metamorphosis is similar to Lon Channey changing into a
werewolf. The packrat will find himself taking out circuit boards from
electrical appliances in the junk bin for the purpose of pulling out a
certain value resistor. A good packrat will reach a point where he will
not have to buy any new resistors, capacitors, switches and transistors.
All he may have to buy is an occasional microcircuit. You won't see many
packrats using many store-bought parts on their projects. Part of the
fun is pulling off old parts from junk boards and watching them work in
another application as a homebrew project.
Sadly, the packrat is becoming extinct in the Amateur Radio
hobby. You will see less and less parts in junk boxes available at flea
markets. It seems people are more geared to selling mostly computer and
other appliances. Sometimes after one is so accustomed to having it all
in a state-of-the art transceiver, it's nice to make a simple transmitter
from scratch that puts out all of maybe two watts. It's hard to beat the
feeling of building something yourself and then making contacts on the
air with it! I got this feeling when I built an oscillator circuit that
later developed into a Two Watt crystal control transmitter and got excellent
signal reports from Ohio, Virginia and France. It seems that even in countries
where homebrewing is a necessity in order to get on the air, there are
more commercial rigs finding their way into these places. I would like
to see a radio contest where the various participants must use a homemade
QRP transmitter for extra points. I think that contests like these might
stimulate an aspect of our hobby that is fading and needs a little boost.
It is not just an issue of being an appliance operator as much as it is
to preserve a spirit of adventure that had been a major part of the hobby
in the early days for many years.
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