Hi Phil,
Great story! Wow! I feel like a newby. I got my novice call (kb9bvi) in
1988. First rig was a TS-820 and, by that time, novices could operate
phone on 10 so I remember making lots of SSB contacts with an antron-99
vertical. As I recall, there were a lot of openings to Europe at that
time. I need to get that rig running again. I remember using a
Radioshack DX-400 to keep track of what frequency I was on. I still have
the audio tuning aide I used to tune the rig. Great memories.
Phil Scovell wrote:
> What I didn't mention in my story of the first contact I ever made was what
> I did to find out the news of my ticket coming in the mail. I had made
> sure, a hundred times, that my mother would call me, day or night, whenever
> my license came in the mail. It came that Monday, April 25, 1966. She knew
> school was out at 4 o'clock in the afternoon and when she got home from
> worked and picked up the mail, there was an envelope from the FCC and she
> knew. After opening the letter and reading my call sign, what it was. She
> picked up the phone, back then I think you still had to go through a long
> distance operator; I don't believe dial #1 had come in to play as of yet, at
> least, we all still were using rotary phone dials. Anyhow, I was on an all
> boys student council and I had been voted in to represent the 8th grade.
> Robert Lesley Newman, Whom I have always known as just bob Newman, whom you
> all often see on these mailing lists, not this one but others, with his
> monthly blind related issue that he posts on his website, was our student
> council president. I was walking down the hall and turned left to angle
> over to the open door of the library where every Monday after school, the
> counsel had their meetings. As I began to pass the open door to the
> school's office, the secretary looked up and saw me. "Oh, Phil, say, Phil."
> I stopped at the open door as I passed and looked in and said, "yes?" "You
> have a long distance call. I have the phone right here at my desk so come
> in." My uncle freed lived in Kansas and often, when coming to see us in
> Omaha, would stop at the school for the blind and get me out of class and
> we'd go out to eat and visit for awhile before he continued on, either to
> our house, or into Iowa to visit relatives there, or he'd head south to
> Wichita Kansas where he was retired. So it could have been Uncle Fred
> calling me because he did that often, too. Taking the phone from the
> secretary, I heard my mom's voice say, "Philip, your ham radio license came
> in the mail today." "It did!" I nearly yelled. "what's the call letters?"
> I made her repeat them a half a dozen times, then I repeated it several
> times myself back to her into the phone, and then even repeated them again
> letter by letter to be 100 percent certain I had it right. Hanging up the
> phone, I spun and headed out the open office door; pointed directly down the
> hall where the ham shack was about 150 feet away. The principle, or who we
> called the school superintendent, had just walked into the secretary's area
> from his private office and he said, "So you got your license today, Phil?"
> I turned my head almost 180 degrees around but kept walking as fast as I
> could go down the hall, and said, "I sure did." He said congratulations, or
> something I can't recall now, because I was gone. After my contact was
> over, it was 5 o'clock and time for everyone to go to the dorm to get ready
> for supper. As I was walking upstairs with other friends working on getting
> their ham tickets, one of the student council members heard me and said,
> "Hey, Scovell. You never showed up for the student council meeting today."
> He knew where I had gone because the superintendent had told them I wouldn't
> be at the student council meeting that afternoon because I had gotten my ham
> ticket and was down in the ham shack so they'd be conducting the meeting
> without me. I always appreciated him for allowing me to do what I did
> because my mind had totally blanked out except for one thing. CQ.
>
> Phil.
> K0NX
>
>
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