Phil,
Glorious!
73,
Richard KK6MRH
-----Original Message-----
From: For blind ham radio operators [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Phil Scovell
Sent: Monday, January 25, 2016 8:56 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Old Days
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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