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