Are you planning ahead?

Have you put any thought into what will happen to all of your prized radio equipment in the event of your death or permanent injury that prohibits you from using them?  Who will you appoint to either give away or sell your equipment so that the surviving spouse, partner or sibling will not have to worry about this while they are going through one of the hardest events of their life?
One of the first steps and in my opinion the most important part of making these arrangements is to identify every piece of ham gear that you value over $50.00 prior to your death or injury.  Below is an partial of list of some of my gear that my wife can use in the event that something should happen to me.  This list is not the entire list of the gear I own and more than likely your list will be far bigger than mine once you start compiling it.

This way if something should happen to the ham operator whether male or female, the surviving spouse, child, partner or friend of the SK will know what the value of your equipment is, so they can be sold off if this is the desire of the estate.
In the event that a large amount of time has passed since this list was completed the prices may have to be adjusted either upward or downward.  This is where the combined knowledge of the Silent Keys friends will come in to play establishing the adjusted prices.  Another source of current asking prices are web site such as QRZ.com, QTH.com and Eham.com.

The Sale of the items

With your list in hand it is now time for the survivor to decide who will help with the disposal of the gear.  If the SK belonged to a local ham club see if you can find an email or newsletter from the club that will likely list the officers of the club and they can be a very valuable source of information on how to sell the items. You may also want to offer a list of the items to the club and offer to sell them to them with a portion of the sales to go to the club, this is something that most ham would have no problem with.  This would also reduce the number of items that might have to be sold on eBay.  Remember the SK more than likely had antennas and a towers erected at his QTH and these will need to come down unless someone else in the family is planning on using them or keeping them.  If you prefer to just sell all of the gear you can check your local yellow pages to see if there is someone that is listed as an eBay seller, this person can inventory the equipment and take photos and arrange shipping of all of the items for a small commission on each sale. One thing that I have started doing is labeling any box that contains cables or wall warts along with a note attached to each one of them explaining which device they are to be sold with. 
Another suggestion is to contact one of the SK’s close ham friends to come to the SK’s home QTH and check all the gear he can to verify whether or not these items work or not.  Remember items that are known to work will fetch a far better price than items whose condition is unknown or not working.

          As of late there seems to be more ham are using estate auction web site to sell their equipment.  These site will inventory your gear as well as photograph all items and then list them on the Internet so people from all over the world can see the auction items and place and bid on it and if they win the item they can also make arrangements to ship the item. Here is list of links that can be used to list the items you have for sale.
QRZ.com
QTH.com
Eham.com
Ebay.com
Be sure to include the estimated cost of shipping the item to buyer.  This can be figured via the USPS.Gov or UPS.com web sites.

Antenna and Tower Removal

One of the biggest issues faced when selling a SK’s radio gear will be the removal of a tower and mounted antenna.  When you find someone who is interested in purchasing the tower, antenna and rotor, explain to the buyer that all responsibility for the safe removal of the tower and antenna will be at his/her expense and part of the expense of purchasing the items will be reduced due to the fact that they will be responsible for the insurance and liability of removing these items. 

Kevin Elliott – KG0MN