Date: Tue, 2 Jun 1998 22:46:31 +0600
To: tcg@k4ro.net
From: w5hvv@aeneas.net (Roderick M. Fitz-Randolph)
Subject: That's Ham Radio!!

As a nine year old, in 1940, I was given my first radio by my parents
....a cast-off, commercially made, 2-headset, catwhisker galena crystal
set.  I was amazed that I could pick up different stations, some close,
some distant, by simply repositioning  the catwhisker on the crystal.
I was especially intrigued when, while lying in bed on the screen porch
one night in San Antonio that I was able to pick up and hear perfectly
WBBM, in the Wrigley Building, Chicago, Illinois!  I learned that the
announcer was Jay Andrees and he hosted the "Music to Dawn" program.
It was beautiful music and I listened in rapt attention.

How could it happen.... this little crystal set, with no electricity?
How could I hear that distant station?  This began my love affair with
radio and with listening to distant stations.  There was magic to it
..... and there still is!

Later, in my early teens, I was listening to another of my parents'
cast-off radios, a Philco desk set with the standard AM band and short
wave radio bands up to 18 mHz.  One night, tuning around 14 Mcs., I
heard W5AHA, Joe Phillips, in my at-that-time hometown of Starkville,
Mississippi, talking to Eva, CN8MM (known as CN8 Mickey Mouse) in Morocco.
This was in the days of AM Ham radio transmitters and receivers, and I
could hear both of them perfectly on my Philco.  Eva spoke flawless
English.  I was enthralled.  How could a voice be sent so far with such
clarity?  How did Joe, W5AHA, do it?  I had to find out.

I contacted Joe and told him I'd heard him talking to Eva and he
invited me over to his shack to witness it first-hand.  Joe used a
Hallicrafters SX-28A receiver and a war surplus Collins ART-13
transmitter.  One of the most intriguing aspects of the whole station
was the 866 mercury vapor rectifiers he used in the homebrew power
supply.  As Joe spoke into the D-104 microphone, the mercury glowed
more intensely.  It was as spellbinding as the fact that Joe, with
that relatively modest station (100 watts on AM) could talk to people
all over the world.  I was hooked.  I had to become a Ham operator.
I wanted to talk to Germany, Morocco, Afghanistan, to everywhere!
I had to be a ham!

I built a 117L7GT single tube regenerative receiver with coils wound
on the liberated bases of octal socket tubes.  I found I could hear
Argentina on 10 meters with it!  I shall never, to my dying day, forget
the thrill of that moment.

I built a 6J6 (war surplus) single tube oscillator using a hairpin
loop for the coil, and tested its frequency with a set of lecher wires
that I had constructed on a two by four.  I used a single edged razor
blade to determine the half wavelength distances.  An NE2 attached to
the hairpin loop glowed purple but went out as I coursed the lecher
wire pair to each halfwave node, and I found it was oscillating at 600
Mcs.  I could not believe the success of that simple little oscillator.

I set about building a 2 tube transmitter: 6C4 xtal oscillator feeding
a 6AQ5 final. It would light up to full brilliance a no. 47 light bulb.
Oh, how I wanted to get on the air..... but I had no license.

I "hung out" at the 25 ham shacks in my home town of Starkville,
Mississippi.  I helped them with antennas when I could. The hams would
let me use their rigs.   They gradually came to know that I knew
protocol perfectly and so they came to let me use their rigs anytime.....
whether they were there or not.  I meticulously filled out their logs
and used their names and made sure I stayed in the bands.  They
encouraged me to get my license but I was having too much fun building
rigs and modifying SCR-522s to work on the above-2 meter CAP frequencies
and other rigs I've long since forgotten.  I was in hog heaven but the
building and modification of rigs occupied my time.  I
spent too much time building a 2 x 1S4 regenerative portable receiver
(in a cigar box with the coil wound around the outside) and other fun
projects, to be confined to the earphones listening to hams talk on CW
at speeds too fast for me to copy.

I had difficulty with code (mostly because of my unwillingness to stick
to practice religiously and so it was some years later that I obtained
my license.... a Novice call of WN5HVV... that took only 5 wpm instead
of the previously unattainable 13 wpm.  I had previously built a 6AQ5
oscillator/807 final CW rig on an upside down cigar box.  I used the
ceramic coil forms that came from ARC-5 Command transmitters and
somewhere I had accumulated two minature meters that fit the side of
the cigar box.  I ran the screen of the 807 too hot and they continued
to get gassy and had to be replaced until I finally ran out of 807s....
but I had 1625s!  I changed the filament transformer and cut 10" lengths
of zip cord and stuck them through the socket holes and soldered them
to the socket.  I soldered the other ends to the proper pins on the
1625s.  I laid the 1625 horizontal on the top of the cigar box.  One
night, I simply had to find out: I picked up the 1625 gingerly by the
phenolic(?) base and waved it around in the air while transmitting CW on
40 meters.... Not much sense, but I sure had fun.  God, I wish I had kept
that cigar box transmitter now.  It was the best damned TV eliminator in
Starkville, Mississippi.

Within 3 months, my code speed was up to a solid 15 wpm and I went to
Mobile, Alabama (the closest Radio Inspector) to successfully pass my
General class license.  The RI was a kindly old Choctaw Indian named Joe
Lightfoot.  I didn't drive back to Starkville: I floated!

When the General license arrived in the mail, I raced upstairs and called
CQ on 15 meter phone using my Harvey Wells TBS-50 Bandmaster transmitter
and listened for an answer on my National NC-57 receiver.  I couldn't
believe my ears but I heard Captain Kurt "Stay-put" Carlsen, W2ZXM/MM of
Flying Enterprise II fame call me.  I had read all about how he had
ordered his crew to abandon ship but refused to leave his Flying Enterprise
so that the salvors couldn't lay claim to the foundering ship.  He was
almost to England and had heard my signal that was catapulted into the
ether by a vertical dipole.    I was ecstatic.  I floated 15 feet off
the ground for a week.  The die was cast.  How could I ever have been so
stupid as to not get my license before?

To send your voice or code signal halfway around the earth; to work a
ham in Mongolia that is working with a home-made CW or SSB transmitter
and a 30-year old receiver; to work JY1, Alhussein Ibn Talal (King
Hussein of Jordon); to talk to Curtis E. LeMay and Butch Griswold during
their famous air trip around the world aboard a converted tanker so that
they could test the effectiveness of SSB for the Air Force; to talk to
UZ6AZW in Russia the day after the 3-day coupe attempt and to find out
that he had communicated with the Russian Parliament via Ham radio during
the coupe and had fed them information regarding the Red Army tanks: where
they were, how many and how fast were they coming; to chat with Barry
Goldwater, K7UGA, on backscatter from Tucson to Phoenix; to operate as
VP7ND from Grand Bahama for 3 months; from Grand Turk as VP5RR for 11
months; from Thailand as HS3VV for 21 months; from England as G5AVW for
18 months!  That was ham radio!  It has been a thrill unlike any other
I can imagine!

Building a 1 or 2 tube receiver, a one tube transmitter, to talk with
someone else that has built a 1 or 2 tube receiver and one tube
transmitter brings back the early period thrill of my ham radio
experience..... and using the latest and greatest transceiver to work
someone in a distant land offers a thrill of a different nature but a
thrill nevertheless.  I share my time back and forth between the
Glowbug/Boatanchor mode and the "hard and fast DXer" mode now.  Both
are so enjoyable.  While waiting for Bhutan or North Korea to come
online, I listen for W7EKB, W7ZFB, W7QQQ, K5DOA, and others on 7050,
7120, or 3579 Kc.  It is a wonderful life!

Ethereal signals, sometimes coming over the pole with that typical wavery
or watery sound, sometimes just above ESP in the static crashes, sometimes
booming in signal strength, sometimes coming from the opposite or long-path
or sometimes skewed direction rather than the direction the great circle
maps would indicate, but always bringing signals from far-away lands with
the voice of people whom we will may never see in our lifetime but with
whom we may become fast friends.

Which is better?  Glowbugging?  Boatanchoring?  Contesting?  DXing?  I
can answer that: they are all wonderful and I love them all and
participate in them all as often as I can.  I switch from my FT-1000MP
to my DX-60B/HG-10B or TBS-50D and NC-57 and back and forth.  That has
been and is ham radio for me!  It has been and is a thrill unlike any
other I can imagine for almost half a century!

Rod, N5HV




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