Rob's Hobbies on Etsy

08/05/2026

Trevor from Telecom Training on YouTube has a nice, simple explanation of how to understand what your antenna analyzer is telling you about your homemade antennas. Great info for new hams.

Why is your antenna resonant on the wrong frequency? Learn how ante...

07/21/2026

The battle rages on regardless of how many new modes get rolled out.

07/18/2026

From the early part of last century, here is a nearly 100 year old ad for Vibroplex telegraph keys. Look at those prices! I rebuild and restore keys like these to resell in my Etsy shop. I assure you, they’re worth far more now than they ever sold for when they were new (without factoring in inflation, of course.)

07/16/2026

I wanted to share this channel I found on YouTube, called “Telecom Training.” It has a lot of good information about RF and antennas. The guy simplifies the topics and delivers it in a slow and deliberate fashion, which might be helpful to a newbie to this technology. I know when I started learning this stuff, I didn’t have many resources to pull from - partly because I chose to learn this on my own, rather than sit in a classroom. Still, watching stuff like this helps refresh my memory and fill in gaps.

📡 Welcome to Telecom Training with Trevor! This channel is dedicated to breaking down complex telecom and networking concepts into simple, easy-to-follow lessons. Whether you're a student, technician, or just curious about how communication systems really work — you're in the right place. 🎥 ...

07/09/2026

Nerdy swag. I recently bought this “Stay Creative” coffee cup from the merch link of one of the YouTube channels that I follow - “Great Scott.” He’s a German YouTuber who does a lot of tech content I like. His signature phrase is “Stay creative, and I will see you next time.” My retirement from my day job has given me back a generous amount of time to explore my creative side and this coffee cup will be there to keep encouraging me to invent and explore.

06/20/2026

Here’s a lesson on radio wave propagation

05/10/2026

More fun vintage electronics education film

04/28/2026

I love watching these vintage electronics education films.

04/11/2026

04/02/2026

This Aeroflex IFR FM/AM 1600S is my retirement gift to myself, or as my wife likes to say, my “graduation gift.” I have wanted a good quality service monitor for testing and aligning radios ever since I parted with my old Wavetek 3000B after shuttering my radio repair business “Radio Doc” decades ago. This unit has many more bells and whistles than my previous device, plus it was recently updated and calibrated. With over 700 pages in the user manual to read, I have a lot of stuff to go over to get familiar with it, but my initial inspection tells me most of the features are already intuitive.

Retired life is going to be awesome!