On Frugality and Another Hole

     I recently acquired another piece of gear for my ham shack, which prompted 2 things:

• Making another hole in my "equipment wall"
• Sharing some advice for those who are in this hobby, and are frugally minded, either by choice, or forced circumstance.

  So what is the piece of equipment that inspired these two things?   Here it is:

    I am certainly not an audio "buff" and I only have a very basic knowledge of audio equipment, but I had a couple things in my shack that I wanted to accomplish that I thought would be aided by adding a mixer.  Primarily, I wanted an easy way to have the option for a couple different microphones at the same time so that I can accommodate guest operators (mainly my kiddos) and be able to route these to multiple radios.  I also figured this would be a nice way to interface the same microphones and headsets with a couple different computers and phones for work conference calls and webinars that I do from my home office.  I've only just grazed the surface of getting everything set up, but so far I'm liking it much better than my old "patch panel" and swapping plugs in and out for the different tasks.

The Advice

   Acquiring this mixer lends itself to sharing something on frugality, that I hope can be a help to younger hams getting into the hobby that might be new in their careers, without a lot of money left over for ham radio purchases, or even to older hams on a fixed income etc.  
   I love ham radio, but like many of you, I'm not swimming in piles of money to be able to spend on it.  I have a good job, and make an ok salary, but a large percentage of what I earn is getting socked into college savings for my kids so they don't have to start their working lives in debt the way I did.  Because of this choice, I am very fugal with my hobby.  With that thought, here is my advice for enjoying ham radio on a budget, and for frugality in general:  

Be patient.

   This might seem like an oversimplification, but it is actually a very powerful practice.  When there is something you want (like a new piece of ham gear, or a robot that mows your yard) put yourself on notice for at least month before making a purchase.  In my experience this does 3 key things:

1. Waiting forces you to really think about the purchase, and prevents you from rushing in and ending up with buyers remorse (i.e., did I really just spend $1300 on a lawn robot, and then also spend money to join a gym, when I could just be getting some of my exercise pushing an actual lawn mower that can be had for practically nothing?)
2. It allows you to consider "do I actually need this thing, or is there a less expensive alternative that will satisfy what I'm after" (i.e. do I really need the fancy $4000 SDR, or would I be perfectly happy with the rig I can now get for a small fraction of that, just because its "old technology.")
3. Taking the time to do this consideration lets you casually research options and do some poking around.  If you've managed to stockpile some good karma, I've found that the universe will often present you with a very viable alternative.

  My new mixer is a great example of this.  I decided several months ago that I wanted to purchase a mixer for my shack.  Since I have limited "hobby" budget, I was dragging my feet, waiting to save up some cash, because mixers with the features I was after were all a decent chunk of change, even if looking for used ones on ebay:

• Sweepable mids, so that I could adjust the frequency of the mid range to add punch where we like it for ham radio
• Multiple sets of outputs, for outputting the audio mix to multiple locations/devices
• USB interface, to get audio into and out of the PC for radio use, without needing to rely on the "analog" sound card inputs and outputs that can be problematic at times

    While dragging my feet and doing my research, I stumbled across the mixer that I ended up buying.  Basically, because I waited, I ended up coming across a sale on these mixers because the company that makes them has discontinued them.  I presume that this is due to the move to digital audio, and less demand for analog mixers.  Because I was being realistic with myself (i.e., I just want to have casual chats on ssb - I'm not a professional broadcaster) I was very comfortable buying something that is "discontinued" considering the fact that it only cost me $150, for something that was previously sold for $400 and up.  Also, being "new" to audio equipment, learning with something relatively inexpensive made way more sense then shelling out hundreds of dollars.

    So there you have it - I've got a new mixer that was pretty much as inexpensive as one can be had with the included features, and hopefully you've been encouraged to "be patient" when considering those big purchases - you just might end up finding something that does what you need, at a fraction of what you thought you were going to need spend!

     Lastly, if you want another example of "Be Patient" Go back to Part 1 of my new shack build and check out the date that I started this whole adventure...it certainly didn't get put together overnight!

   P.S.  I'll be sure to share more about my thoughts on the actual mixer once I've used it for a while, but if you think the price sounds right, I found it at Full Compass.  I can't give any official endorsement, and I get nothing from them if you buy one, but I figured I'd at least share where I managed to snag what seems to be a decent deal.

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