Sure do miss the novice days and the fun we had as teens.  Betsey and I are
licensed now fifty years this year!  Gosh I can remember talking about it
and now its real.  We sure spent a lot of time on the air as kids.   


 
-----Original Message-----
From: For blind ham radio operators [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Phil Scovell
Sent: Monday, January 28, 2008 4:22 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