CHAPTER I I was the son of an Air Force wanderer, and, while we were living in Marietta, Georgia, and I was about nine years old, I recall the house down at the corner had what I considered to be
strange goings on. There was a big wide-base tower of some sort in the back yard, and since that yard faced my house, my view of the tower, and the lights inside a small back room, was pretty
clear. I was curious. But not curious enough, it seems. I did ask someone what was all about, that man I could see through the rear window, with big "stuff" in front of him. "Stuff"
was probably the best word I had for it. Someone said he was a ham operator, and that was the end of that, for me, then. Some time later, perhaps when I was 13, we went to visit someone I didn't
know, a sort of relative. He lived in the Tazewell, Tennessee area, far back in the woods. I recall we drove our old car (well, my Father drove!) up a narrow dirt road for some distance, seemed
like miles, and at one point we forded a creek, deep in the forest. I thought at the time, "Is that why they call these cars Fords?" At the house the man we were visiting wanted to show me his
ham station. He took me to a loft in the barn. Out the window the view was perhaps a hundred yards across a gentle, bowl-shaped valley, and from the barn, a wire ran all the way across that
valley to a tall tree on the other side. To me, it was a very long wire, and I was fascinated at how he had attached it to keep it from falling. But the radio stuff on the table didn't really
"grab" me. I looked at it, and now, more than fifty years later, I have a dark image of a few black boxes on the table, and some wires. It was plain to him I wasn't interested, and we returned to
the house. I remember nothing else about that trip. But these were my introduction to ham radio. I just wasn't listening. CHAPTER II The Spanish teacher turned to one of the
students in my class and asked, "David, when you talk on your ham radio to hams in South America, do you use Spanish?" His answer was that sometimes he did, but not always. I was just
16, and in the tenth grade at Young High School, in Knoxville, Tennessee. And this was my first live "ham." I looked at the boy a couple of rows away. A ham? I decided to get to know him.
After class I approached him. "You're a ham radio operator?" "Yes," he responded, "are you interested?" I certainly was. And so it began. David, like many of us
teens, tended to exaggerate things a bit, and he told me he would have me come to his house, but that his "big rig, with 400 watts" was in the shop. That was OK with me, as I wanted to see a real ham
station from the inside, though I had seen one when I was just 13. This was different; now I was interested. I went to David's place. I was soon to learn there was no 400 watt transmitter,
just a Heathkit AT-1. I don't recall his transmitter but I think it was a Heathkit AR-2. And he was a Novice, not a General, but at the moment that didn't mean much to me. I was excited but
too dumb to ask questions. Leaving David's place, I decided I needed more information. A few days later I was at a book store, and I bought an ARRL License Manual. Fifty Cents. It
covered all classes of licenses. I also bought, for $3.50, the ARRL Radio Amateur's Handbook, 1956 (brand new) edition. It is that book that started me to my ham license, not because I learned
what was in it but because of a simple act of fate. On my way home from the book store I was sitting on the bench at the bus stop, with my grandmother, and I was looking at that thick book,
understanding none of it. A man was standing nearby, also waiting for the bus. He came over closer, and then he spoke to me. "Are you a ham?" "No, I'm not," I replied. "Just learning."
"We have a radio club. Would you like to come and learn more about it?" I certainly would. This fine man who then was probably in his thirties, was Dick Ingram, W4PHW. He was the super
Elmer I needed. A good friend, Johnny Walker, and I, were soon in the basement ham shack of Dick's, taking the Novice examination. In those days, the Novice and the Technician class licenses
were administered by any ham of General Class or higher. When the Novice and Technician class licenses were first established in 1951, the tests had to be taken in front of the FCC examiner, but
by 1956 these, and the mail-order General, called the Conditional Class, could be taken in front of any ham of General Class. No team was needed. The procedure was the ham administering the test
would have to first administer the code test. If the applicant passed the code test, the administrator would then certify that on the form, and would send for the written test. When the written
test arrived, taking a couple of weeks, it would be given to the applicant, and he would take it in front of the administrator. Though the ham giving the test was not supposed to review it
and tell if the applicant had passed or not, he usually did. Dick gave Johnny and me our code tests and we passed, both of us copying, so Dick said, around seven words per minute. That was
thanks to the Knoxville Amateur Radio Club's code tapes and Dick's relentless pushing. So we passed. Dick sent for the written examinations, and they came in probably a week or so. He
called us back to his basement. Johnny and I sat in a small room a few feet from Dick's glowing Meisner Signal Shifter and transmitter, awed by the sounds of the ham shack, and intimidated by the
feel of the actual FCC Novice Class Written Examination in our hands. And then we started. I had studied that License Manual intensively, and I was sure I would do well on this test. I
don't know that I did, but I did what counts, and that is, I passed! Dick looked over both our tests silently. Then he said "I think you both passed." We were going to be hams!!
...To be continued ... |
