A great memory, indeed. And yes, I remember listening to talking books
on 33/1/3 or 16, and later 8rpm's. "This book is continued on the other
side of this record." <grin>.--Matt, N1IBB.
--
Matthew Chao <[log in to unmask]>
On Mon, 25 Jan 2016 09:55:31 -0700
Phil Scovell <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I had received my novice call about 3 weeks before the Nebraska school for
> the blind let out for summer vacation. I couldn't wait to spend my whole
> summer on the air. I had a DX 20, which later, even with a brand new tube,
> put out 9.5 watts, and a BC348 receiver that only tuned 160 through 20
> meters. My antenna was a 100 foot long wire that ran from a window about 30
> feet off the ground, out to a tree at the end of the 4-plex we were renting.
> I used no tuner. At first, I only had the long wired connected to a knife
> switch. One side had my antenna and the other side was ground shielding
> that dropped down 30 feet from the window to a short ground rod. So,
> whenever I went off the air, I pulled up the window, threw the knife switch
> over, and the antenna was grounded. I didn't have any coax at the time so I
> used bear wire to connect the transmitter from the knife switch to the SO239
> on the back of the rig. I had no relay. In the fall, I got a Viking Ranger
> 1 and 80 and 40 meter inverted v put up and I even got a very very noisy dal
> key relay to switch the antenna when I switched in and out of transmit or
> receive. my little DX20, however, held it's own back during those novice
> days. It was mid summer when I, in earnest, began studying for the general
> class exam. My Elmer, and tutor, taught me one on one for several weeks on
> Sunday afternoons, or sometimes on a Saturday, and then gave me the novice
> test. The FCC out of Kansas City came once every 3 months to Omaha to give
> the general and extra class exams so I deliberately missed the one in the
> summer so I could have more time to study. Back then, somehow the general
> class manual was recorded on vinyl records and I began listening to them
> over and over again. When the FCC examiner came in October, I had not only
> half way memorized the general class manual but I went and spends some one
> on one lessons from my Elmer until he finally announced I was ready to take
> the test. This would give me a second chance, if I flunked the first one,
> since the examiner would be back in Omaha one more time before my 1-year
> novice class license expired permanently. My mom dropped a friend of mine,
> and I, off at the building downtown where I would take the test. My friend
> was in his early twenties and was in the college my mom worked for at the
> time. He was my reader for the day. I was still just 14 years old. The
> examiner asked me to wait till all the other guys had taken both the 13 WPM
> code test, or 20 WPM for the two guys going for the extra, so about an hour
> later, there were perhaps 12 to 15 guys there, I sat down at a table and put
> on my headphones. My friend wrote down whatever I said as I copied the code
> and then an old brass pounder was slid in front of me and I was tested for
> sending 13 words per minute. I passed both. My friend then read the test
> to me. The examiner told me to skip anything with diagrams and if I needed
> any of those later, he would test me on those, too. As it turned out, I
> missed enough that I had to explain 3 diagrams to pass. He had my friend
> write them down as I dictated the circuits to him and after the examiner
> read them over, he said, "You passed." By the way, back then, you could
> take the Extra class, I believe it was a 100 question written test, but it
> gave you no new privileges. Going back to the summer before I took the
> general, I was up on the third floor of the brick house we were renting.
> The finished off attic had no heat or air conditioning but being a brick
> house, it wasn't half bad. Although the winters were freezing up there.
> Without an electric blanket cranked up as high as it would go, I would have
> frozen solid up there during the winter. As I lay on my back on my bed,
> listening to the general class material being played on my talking book
> machine, I sucked on a cheery flavored sucker. I heard foot steps on the
> stairway. I sighed, my mom, or most likely, my little sister, were coming
> up to bug me again and hear I was trying to deeply absorbed the manual. I
> waited until I heard the steps stop at the top of the stairs. Pulling out
> my sucker, I said, "Now what?" Tex, a ham friend I came to know quite well
> by working him on 80 meters, said, "What do you mean, what now," and he
> busted out laughing. I was embarrassed, to say the least, and tried to
> blame it on my mom and sister bugging me while I was trying to study. I
> shut the record off and Tex came over and looked at the record as it spun to
> a stop. "So this is how you are preparing for the General, hay?" Tex was
> in his 40s and worked for Western Electric in Omaha. I had first heard his
> CQ on the 80 meter novice band. It would have had to have been on 3703 or
> 3725 or on 3747 because those were the only crystals I had at the time. Tex
> was sending horrible code with a bug but I called him any way. As the QSO
> progressed, I suggested that if he would throw that bug away and pull out a
> regular hand key, we could have a nice qso together. He did so and he
> brought it up nearly every time I saw him about how I asked him to toss his
> bug away and get a good hand key so we could talk. By the way, his hand key
> sending was great. I had a bug, too, but didn't use it for slower contacts
> and Tex was a new ham, too. His call was, before he died in a motorcycle
> crash, W A 0 Old Milk Bottle. Tex came over and took me with him to World
> Radio across the Missouri River into Council Bluffs where WRL was at that
> time. I got a coil base loaded vertical and I forget what Tex was there
> for. Anyhow, we came home, he helped me put the vertical up but making
> comparisons on the air between that and my long wire proved there were no
> differences. Over the years, I have made a lot more friends over the radio
> than I ever dreamed was possible. It is still a fun hobby some 50 plus
> years later. Well, this pleasant old memory recently came to mind so I
> thought I'd share it.
>
> Phil.
> K0NX
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