Hi Phil and all, Thanks for stirring up the Christmas Ham Memories. I
remember my Christmas as a novice/first time I was one of them there
fellers,/novice tickets were non renewable, 1 year only, strictly cw except
on six meters and above I think, Anyway, the first time I was kn4BOA, then I
got a Tech ticket, w4ukt, which lapsed in the late sixties, got another
novice, wn4uuu in the early seventys, then a second tech/wb4idu which after
twenty-3 years or so, in 1996 I finally upgraded to General, but I digress.
Anyway, that year, it was either 1958 or 1959, my Dad and a couple of my
elmers, got together on Christmas Eve, and put up an eighty meter antenna,
whether long wire or dipole, I'm not sure to this day, but nonetheless, it
ran a couple of hundred feet, from our house back to near the back border of
our property, was suspended riding on pulleys, with some kind of flat iron
weights hanging at either end to keep the thing balanced, and used a Coax
Lead in, run to a knife switch to switch antenna from transmitter to
receiver, . When they called me down to test it, rather than the A R B,
four band Air Craft Receiver/150KC-9 or so meg, Unit that'd had its' 24Volt
Dynamotor replaced with a homebrew AC DC Power Supply, or the Hallicrafters
S38A receiver/both of which I'd borrowed from time to time from one of my
elmers, I found what they called an Arc5 Receiver,/a monoband/in this case
3-6Mhz, military receiver, much smaller than either of the others, which had
had its' dynamotor replaced by an AC Power Supply. These receivers, though
monobanders, really had good selectivity for their time, and as if that
weren't enough, there was a 80, 40, 20, 15, and 10meter, CW
transmitter/either knight or allied radio, I forget which, actually in a
metal cabinet_ with a band switch, and three, count them, three loading
tuning condensers, ! to replace the homebrewed by one of my buddies, two
tube,-either 5u4 and 5881/6l6, or was it a 6x4 and 5881/6L6-Come to think of
it, maybe the thing was a 3tube xmitter, anyhow, it _definitely _Was an only
80meter monoband xmitter that was link coil coupled to the antenna, only had
one tuning condenser, and absolutely _No Cabinet_!
Welll, in those days, I only had two transmit crystals, 3704 and I think
3720KC, but that night, I worked MO from VA, with my fifty watts/only could
xmit up to seventy five as a novice in those days, got a 5-8-9 RST, and
thought I'd arrived---and indeed I had, as my furthest DX up til then had
been NC, PA, NY, and MA, all from one of two places in VA. I wouldn't trade
that time and those memories for a brand new WhaChaMaCallIt! Merry Christmas
All, Danny.----- Original Message -----
From: "Phil Scovell" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, December 25, 2007 3:00 PM
Subject: DX 100
> Christmas day is always a good ham radio recollection for me. I was
> living
> in Omaha, Nebraska and I would have been about 15 years old. I was WA0ORO
> at that time. I had turned on the radio and started working DX first
> thing
> that morning with my Drake TR4 but I only had wire antennas at the time.
> Later that next fall, I would finally get a tri bander up on the roof but
> this particular Christmas morning, I snagged country number 100 using my
> 80
> and 40 meter dipoles, on the same feed line, on 15 meters, and my antennas
> were only up about 30 feet. I worked a YO2 for number 100 and just as I
> signed, my mom called down the basement steps and said it was time to open
> presents. I felt pretty proud that day as I walked upstairs to open the
> gifts. That should have been 1967 and I worked country number 300 on 20
> side band in 1981 which was an OJ0. I went back over my logs for that
> year
> and I had worked 295 countries in one year on 20 meters with a mono band 4
> element 20 meter beam. I finally got up to 312 but haven't done hardly
> any
> DX work since about 10 years ago. Upon reaching 300 countries, I then
> started building up my country counts on 160, 80, and 40 meters.
>
> Phil.
> K0NX
> Denver, Colorado
>
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