Phil,

Brings back so many memories.  For me, the t-60 and the old horrible s-118 
by halicrafters. Three crystals for 40 meters and that didn't really matter 
because, a couple of turns of the dial and you were through the entire band. 
Novice at 11 and general not until 15.  What a great day it was when I got a 
Heath kit Apache and Mohawk twins.  Ah the difference.  I still remember my 
first dx, g3ils, 15 meters c w.

Then, ham radio was on the leading edge of technology. The men and women who 
were bitten by the hobby, for the most part were serious minded people. They 
still exhibited good manners too.  Try listening to 7200 and you will wonder 
where all the mannered people went and those who used to enforce the rules. 
Still, ham radio remains one of the finest hobbys on the planet.

Chuck, wa8vmo

--------------------------------------------------
From: "Richard B. McDonald" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, January 26, 2016 11:01 AM
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Old Days

> 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