Hi Phil, That's one of the finest pieces on this pastime I've run across in 
years, thank you ______So Much for all you are and all you do!  I've 
forwarded what you said to a number of folks giving you the adequate 
credits.  You're a trooper, thanks, dd.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Phil Scovell" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, January 28, 2008 4:21 PM
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
> 
>