This is way back at the beginning. The year is 1969. I am but a mere 22 years of age. A year back from my Navy tour of duty and a naval reservist, and no more than a year into my marriage. It was Chief John Petrick at the reserve center that gave me my novice exam. He was also there when I made my first QSO (contact) with K2UCE. Her card is first on the bulletin board place of honor.
Hmm… I had a lot more hair back then too. Must be the 40 years of RF energy that burned it off. A hazard of operating a short wave radio transmitter (just kidding).
The receiver is a Hammarlund SX170C ham band only 17 tube triple conversion superheit. The transmitter is a Johnson Viking 50 watt CW only crystal controlled. The “N” in the call sign signifies a novice call and back then I was limited to 75 watts and the frequency had to be crystal controlled. Of course I had a handful of crystals.
The antenns is a 40 meter dipole over the driveway that worked just fine on 15 meters too. The station required throwing a switch to change from transmit to receive. That switched the antenna and took the receiver out of standby.
No computers in those days, but we were headed in that direction. Soon everything would become digital. Here we are pure analog except for the transmission of the “dits” and “dahs”. I guess that is about a pure digital as you can get!
hey dan ,sorry im in too big of a hurry to read any of the stuff you wrote up there.gotta get out on the weed eater (no not riding a cow again)…but i was just wondering who that guy is up there with ALL the hair ? ,and its really dark too, he must be really young, huh?
he looks strangely like …..you??
🙂 🙂 🙂
(of course you know im kidding right?)
things have changed a lil’ bit huh ,
Yeah sure… to busy to read huh?
Yes, it has been a while. I still like CW once in awhile. Back to basics.
Dan