As I mentioned earlier, I was living on an air force base near 
Fairbanks when my ticket came along.  On 80 meters there were a few 
widely scattered KL7's on plus an occasional VE8.  Below those strong 
signals from one edge of the band to the other was a sea of weak 
stations from the U.S.  It was a lot of fun being a DX station for 
all those novices!  Today on 80 it's hard to find a CW QSO.

73,

Dave, W7OQ

At 11:39 AM 4/26/2010, you wrote:

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>This reminiscing is fun.
>
>I got my Novice WN8NHW on July 9, 1964.  I borrowed a friend's DX-35 xmitter
>and worked mainly forty with xtals for 7161 and 7169; I think I had another
>Crystal for 15 meters, but I didn't get on that band much.  I think it
>pretty much closed up at night during the school year, as I think 1964 was
>the bottom of a cycle.
>
>Later that year, my parents purchased a rebuilt NC-300 which replaced an old
>Heathkit GR-91 which I think might have been a regenerative receiver.  The
>300 ran circles around it.
>
>I didn't pass my Conditional until the summer of 1966 so I received my new
>call, WA8VAA in September and got a Viking Invader transmitter to use with
>the 300 receiver.
>
>By then, the upper HF bands were pretty active, I worked quite a bit on 20,
>15 and 10 just using a trap dipole.
>
>I think the most exciting moment for me was working California on 40 CW a
>few months after I got my Novice ticket.  I remember staying up pretty late
>until the band was long enough for me to work them.  My antenna was only 20
>feet up so it didn't hear very well under most circumstances.
>
>Steve, K8SP
>
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