Ah you do bring back memories and I agree with you about Wayne.  Oh yes,
the rig was a great place to keep snacks warm.  However not so good with
iced tea.  My Drake sure did not like that stuff!  Repair was easy, a
hair dryer.  Not sure the solid state would do as well grin.   


###
BRETT WINCHESTER  KD7JN 
[log in to unmask] 
208-639-8386
###


-----Original Message-----
From: For blind ham radio operators
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Phil Scovell
Sent: Monday, January 28, 2008 2:22 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Remember When

I had an interesting experience recently.  Over 40 years ago, after
passing my general at 14 years of age, I discovered 15 and 10 meters.
The bands were so good in the mid to late sixties, I spent most of my
operating time on the higher bands.  I got interested in all the
activity, at that time, on the 15 meter novice band.  In fact, I often
worked novices on every band where they had privileges.  15 meters was
loaded, back then, with lots of novices and I even started something I
called the WWN or Worldwide Novice Net.  I got check ins from all over
the country, too.  during this time, I ran across a ham in New York.  We
had a long rag chew and became friends and started meeting several times
a week during the summers when school was out.  During school, we
scheduled on weekends.  He only had, as I recall, a single 15 meter
crystal so I always new where to find him.  Time passed, and we lost
track of each other.  Recently, I received an email.
This guy was asking me if I used to be WA0ORO back in Omaha, Nebraska
and if I remembers Chas, WN2CBX.  It was the same guy, now living in
Florida, and retired and taking care of his mother who live a few blocks
away.  We have been exchanging emails since then and hopefully we'll get
to have an on air contact eventually.
40 years, or a little longer, have passed but it seemed like yesterday
when I recalled all those contacts we had on 15 meters.
I well remember growing up around older hams who did such things, that
is, they made friends on the radio by establishing regular weekly
contacts.  Oh, I know it is out of style now due to cell phones, digital
voice over internet phone connections, echo link, and a variety of other
ways of keeping in touch.  Perhaps those ways are even easier, for that
matter, but there was something special about agreeing to regular on air
scheduled contacts that really seemed to make the hobby grow.  I made
literally dozens of friends this way and about on every band, too,
including CW and side band.  Sometimes even Amplitude Modulation for
that matter.
Is it just me, or has the hobby change that much?  I used to stay up on
Friday nights, after getting home from the Nebraska school for the
blind, until 4 o'clock on Saturday mornings, if not later, because I had
a schedule with a small town Nebraska cop who got off duty at about that
time.  We worked each other for weeks at that same early hour time.
Another friend, long dead now, and I got our novices about the same
time.  He lived 45 miles from me but we decided, as novices, to set
schedules at exactly midnight on 37 46 KHz.  We did that all during our
novice days but eventually switched to side band.  We did it nightly
during the summer and on weekends when school was in session.  It didn't
take us long to attract a number of other teenage hams all over the
Mid-west.  It was not uncommon for 8 to 12 states to all be on
frequency, all teens, and often we talked all night until the sun came
up.  This literally went on for years.  Occasionally, I still run across
one or two of these guys on the bands.  some are big DX operators while
some only get on the air occasionally.  As a young teenager, I was
literally quite shy.  I found carrying on a conversation with people
difficult at best.  When I got my novice license, I suddenly wanted to
talk and I wanted to talk to as many people as I could.  My code speed
jumped to 25 words per minute within a few short weeks.  I worked mostly
80 and 40 with a 100 foot long wire and no tuner.  My DX20, into a dummy
load, put out 10 watts.  I worked about 36 states in about 4 months
until I got a Viking Ranger 1 and a friend helped me put up an 80 and 40
meter dipole at about 35 feet.  I got up to 41 states before I passed my
general six months into the hobby.  We established traffic nets for
novices, worked crossed band with generals who went to the phone band
and transmitted on SSB and listened to us transmit CW in the novice band
and man did we think that was hot stuff.  I really miss the novice days
and those early general class days working people all over the world on
a couple of inverted V wires hanging up on the roof.  I eventually went
to rotary antennas and found that I had more and more fun, and newer
things to try, the bigger the antenna.  When I got married and was broke
most of the time, I ran a QRP rig running 2 watts and a ground mounted
vertical.  I found that equally as fun after working over 600 stations
and all 50 states, including 14 countries, plus Alaska and Hawaii both
on 40 CW.  With digital and satellite communications, internet node
connections, VHF modes, line of sight modes, moon bounce, amateur
television, and dozens of other things to try, Wayne Green of 73
magazine could never have been as wrong a few years ago when he said to
Art Bell on Coast To Coast nothing new had been created in 50 years of
ham radio since single side band.  I guess he forgot all the other modes
now available to hams.  This guy who contacted me recently after 40
years?  When I confirmed it was me, he dialed up my location on the net
and saw my house, told me its color, described my son's house in the
backyard, and my son's pickup and trailer parked in the long driveway.
I think Wayne Green lost it when he started that UFO net on 75 meters
back in the sixties.  Remember how fun it was just to get QSL cards in
the mail?  I stop collecting decades ago but now I wish I had kept them
all.  Shoot, I even worked the county hunters nets and began trying to
achieve that award.  Talk about QSL cards.  Then there were the side
band and CW traffic nets as well as all those overseas phone patches
from soldiers out in the Pacific islands and MARS contact and phone
patches from Vietnam.  Who ever said the hobby was boring.  I used to
keep one of my wrapped McDonald hamburgers laying on top of the back of
my Drake TR4 final amplifier cage as I operated just to keep it warm.

Phil.
K0NX
AF0H
WA0ORO
WN0ORO