Phil, you have had some very interesting ham radio experiences.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Phil Scovell" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2008 9:36 PM
Subject: Most Memorable Experiences


> Working Alaska on 80 Meters As A Novice.
>
>     John Coyle became my roommate at the school for the blind.
> He didn't show much interest in ham radio but then when you first
> go blind, there are a lot of other things that are much more
> important.  It wasn't long, however, and mostly due to an older
> man in the town of 500 people where his father owned the only
> grocery store, that he became very interested.  He became a good
> friend of this man, who was a big DX operator, and John decided
> he'd go for his novice.  His friend actually built him a crystal
> control, 75 watt, transmitter.  I forget what he had for a
> receiver now.  Omaha was 35 miles east of Mead, Nebraska and
> during the summers, John and I had daily schedules.  It didn't
> take him long at all to build his code speed and after he was well
> above 13 words per minute, I began working him cross mode.  I'd go
> up into the 75 meter phone band with my TR4 and work side band and
> listen to him down in the novice band on one of his crystal
> frequencies.
>
>     One day, over the Christmas vacation, John casually
> mentioned, when I asked what all he had been working on the air,
> that he had worked, just the night before, Alaska.  I laughed
> into my microphone and said I wouldn't believe that unless he had
> a QSL card to prove it.  Still, he insisted it was true.  I asked
> him the guy's call.  He told me.  I think it was KL7JDU but I'm
> not for sure.  I still didn't believe him and, in fact, I used to
> sneak down to the couple of crystal frequencies I knew he had,
> and I would listen for him calling CQ.  When I would find him,
> normally day times but once an awhile I could hear him at night,
> I'd use the KL7 call sign, with my power turned down to about a
> watt, and call him.  Other times, I would make up other DX calls
> and come back to him.  He'd always know it was me for some reason.
> Well, it turned out the joke was on me.
>
>     Over that same Christmas vacation, about a dozen teenage hams
> operators I knew, and talked to most nights at midnight on 3997
> from Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa,
> sometimes Missouri, and Oklahoma, decided to have a side band 75
> meter contest over one weekend.  We each tried working as many
> states as possible.  Two of us worked 49 states and nobody hit all
> fifty.  I knew where a KH6 in Hawaii, and a KL7 in Alaska, used to
> hang out on the bands on two different overnight nets.  The KL7
> was on the County Hunters net and one night, while trying to
> collect all 50 states, I was the net control.  A KL7 checked in
> using the exact same call sign John said he had worked a couple of
> nights earlier in the 80 meter novice band.  So, I asked the guy
> if it was true, without giving him my friends novice call sign,
> and he said, "Yes, I worked him," and he stated John's call, the
> frequency, and time, "here on 80 CW just a couple of nights ago."
> I told him we were friends and I didn't believe him at first but I
> did now.  To this day I wouldn't have believed it except I got it
> from the horses mouth.  Just think of it.  A Nebraska novice
> running about 30 watts output to an 80 meter inverted V at about
> 30 feet works Alaska.  Not bad.
>
> Phil.
> www.K0NX.COM under construction.
>