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