Here is an article of my early days of learning the code. I also produced,
for a couple of years, a monthly audio cassette called Continuous Wave which
was just a straight forward ham magazine for the blind.
Continuous Wave
By Phil Scovell
An older brother of a friend was a TV repairman. I discovered him in the
basement of their home one evening and was fascinated with all the
electronics gear;
parts, tubes, wires of every size, length, and shape, speakers of every
size, and a rainbow
of colors displayed from markings on little parts in boxes which he told me
had
numerical meanings. I began asking the poor guy a million questions. He
offered to take
me with him on TV repair house calls so I went at least once, as I recall,
perhaps more.
Later this first night, he said, "Phil, you should get your ham license."
I had no
idea what he was talking about so he said, "Come here. I want to show you
my station."
He had just become a novice and had a nice DX60 transmitter and the HQ129X
receiver.
This was in the fall of 1963 and I was 10 years old. He let me tune around
on the
receiver but I was already hooked by just looking at the equipment. I
wanted to be a ham
operator, just like he said, and maybe repair TV sets, too.
Before I got the chance to even begin, my father took ill unexpectedly, but
severely, and died three weeks later; never leaving the hospital. A month
later, Christmas
came and soon I had to go back to school. It felt weird somehow and my
interest in
electronics had been more than dampened; it had been totally forgotten.
Six months following the death of my father, I started having vision
problems.
My retinas were weak, I was told, and the retinas were beginning to shred,
not tear or rip
or peal back from one corner, thus, surgery would have worked even back
then, but
literally shredded into thousands of tiny pieces; making repair impossible.
Six months
later, following the first of a dozen surgical procedures on my retinas,
including the laser
beam that had just been invented experimentally for retinal repairs, on the
exact date of
my father's death, a year to that date, I came home totally blind.
A little over three weeks later, after coming home from the hospital, , on
December 7, 1964, I ended up in a weird place called a school for the blind
and never
experienced home sickness that severely. I spent every available minute I
could capture
alone, crying quietly, and hoping nobody would hear me.
One day, as I did every day following lunch, I went to the visitors lounge,
sat on a
couch, and began my home sickness quietly crying spell. Soon someone sat
down at the
other end of the couch and introduced himself to me. His name was Lynn. I
hoped he'd
go away and leave me to my misery but he had something else in mind. Weeks
later,
after we became close friends, I asked him one day why he came into the
visitors lounge
that day. "Well," he said, "I noticed you every day after lunch alone and
crying and knew
what home sickness was like so I thought I'd try and be a friend," and so he
was until the
day he died many years ago.
The next day I went to that same visitors lounge figuring I'd repeat my
half an
hour home sickness crying spell, but Lynn was already there. We talked and
then after a
few minutes he said, "Do you know anything about ham radio?"
"I sure do," I brightened. "I wanted to get my license just before I lost
my sight a
few months ago."
"well, then," he said, "would you like to see our club ham station? I'm
studying
for my novice license right now."
We practically ran down to the ham shack and there it all was again.
Another
DX60 but instead of the HQ129X, we only, for awhile, had the old SX99 but
later, we
would be sporting the old faithful HT37 transmitter and the HQ180X receiver.
Lynn began teaching me what he knew about the theory and then began sharing
a
dozen old open reel tapes a partially sighted man, who was in TV repair and
also taught
night school in electronics, had made for us. He was a good teacher and
since he lived in
Omaha, Nebraska, where we had moved before I went blind, I started going
over after
church every Sunday for a few hours and being tutored by him.
Shortly after going to the school for the blind of Nebraska, I turned 12
years of
age, and within weeks, learned all the code. Lynn and I, as well as a few
other students,
all practiced by listening to the novice bands and sending to each other
with a code
oscillator. My Elmer helped me buy an old BC348 receiver, putting up a 100
foot long
wire for me, and within a few weeks, I was copying 5 words per minute. I
had made a
vow. I promised myself never to tune the phone bands unless I had spent at
least 30
minutes a day tuning the novice bands on 80 and 40 meters. My method was
simple. I
tuned around until I found someone calling CQ slow enough for me to copy.
Then I'd
wait until he got someone answering him. I'd copy both sides until the
contact was over.
I even made a log of call signs, locations, names, and frequencies and
bands. My speed
climbed rapidly using this simple technique.
About a week before I turned 14, in the month of February of 1965, I took
my
novice test. My Elmer, who tested me, both with the 5 WPM code test and the
25
multiple choice written test, told me I had passed both the code and the
written test and
he also told me that I was already copying 10 words per minute. I bought,
for 15 dollars,
a DX20, and got on the air in late April of 1966 and had a blast for 7
months until I
passed my general and got on the big bands.
My mom, for Christmas, about a month after getting my general license, went
to
World Radio Labs in Council Bluffs, Iowa, the home of the Galaxy radios back
then,
across the Missouri river from Omaha, and for Christmas bought me a brand
new, never
been out of the box, Drake TR4. Now I could work side band and I did.
A sighted friend helped me through the manual and we, step by step, went
through tuning and operating the radio together. He was not a ham but he
spent several
hours reading to me and letting me figure out what the manual was talking
about. He
decided he wasn't going to leave until I was able to operate the rig by
myself. He was a
friend of the family and a college student at the time and lived near by.
After the first night of staying up all night and working everybody on 75
meters I
could find, including breaking into round tables, I got up about mid morning
that next
day and the first person I heard calling CQ on 75 meters near the Nebraska
traffic net
frequency, was my friend, Lynn. He, too, had a Drake TR4 and although he
was only 45
miles away to the south, we talked for hours and he taught me many things
about my own
rig which I didn't even know.
about three months of phone operations, I got to missing CW so figured out
how
to get the TR4 to run CW. Putting up inverted vees, I got on the higher
bands and since
they were red hot, I work DX all over the world until about a year later my
mom let me
buy an 8 foot tripod for the roof and a Hygain TH3 Junior triband beam and
the AR22
rotor. The beam was up 28 feet and I began working DX like never before and
nearly all
on CW.
So it is today. I always tune the CW bands and when I want to work
somebody or
call CQ, it's on CW. Sure, I still work phone but my Elmer would tune the
novice bands
and point out various hams locally on the CW bands, interpret what they were
transmitting, and would end by saying, "He's a good CW man." I decided I
wanted to be
a good "CW man," too. I was copying better than 20 WPM before I took my
general and
years later, when I took the CW test for the extra class, I was copying 45
words per
minute.
In January of 1980, I bought my first CW keyboard and never went back to a
straight key or a bug as I had used for my novice days and early general
class weeks of
operation. I did by a Hallicrafters HA1TO electronic keyer, which my mother
promised
to by me once I passed my general, so for about 5 weeks, I was a hot shot
novice with a
electronic keyer; a rare thing indeed. Talk about hog heaven. As I said,
once I bought
my first keyboard, on the other hand, I never went back. In my hay days, I
rag chewed
on 20 and 40 CW with some of the all time great CW operators around the
United States
at Canada at 70 words per minute. I can't copy that now but I still can run
about 50 if I
want to roll right along.
Does it, as is so often mentioned, make you a better ham to know the code?
Of
course not. I know guys, blind guys, who know electronics better than most
sighted
guys, and many of them haven't worked code in years. CW doesn't make you a
better
ham no more than any other digital mode does. By the way, stop and think
about it. CW
is what I call ODM: the Original Digital Mode. Try it. You may like it.
[log in to unmask]
WWW.RedWhiteAndBlue.ORG
|
