In 1958 we moved to upstate New York, just north of West Point, and that is where I graduated high school, at Cornwall Central High School, that June. We lived in a small mountain community called
Highland Mills, in an old farm house on top of a hill. My ham shcak was on the second floor, and with lots of trees around, stringing antennas was easy. At first I operated with the Johnson
Adventurer, crystal controlled, and the Hallicrafters S-85 I had purchased in Denver. But I wanted more versatility, and seeing a VFO/Exciter for sale, I bought it. It was, it turned out, a
Hallicrafters HT-18, not very suited to be an "only rig." I also bought a Johnson Ranger, the first model without six meters. That June I shipped out, a week after graduation, in the US Air
Force. When my parents moved again, they asked me in a letter if they could sell my ham radio equipment. I agreed, as it did not look like I would get to use it for a long time to come. Then,
in 1959, I became interested in the MARS station at Lowry AFB, Colorado, where I was stationed. The rig there was a Collins 75A1 and a 32V1. I wanted one! In a few months I found a 75A1,
but I never acquired the 32V. Since I was living in the barracks on base, I had to ship the 75A1 to my parents. They moved to California and took it with them, and when I got a leave (vacation) I
went to California as well, and set up the station, which now consisted of the 75A1 and a Heath DX20. I operated portable, briefly, from Inglewood, California. After joining the Air Force,
I had managed to get my old K0KPM call sign back, by using as my home address, Maynard's address in Aurora. Then I got orders to go overseas, and once again the ham gear was sold. Over the
next three years I operated in France as an F7 and briefly in Morocco as a CN8. But I had no radio equipment. I used another ham's and pretended it was mine, for the reciprocal licensing
procedures. Returning to the USA and leaving the Air Force, I let go my K0KPM call sign, and became K3SSP in Dover, Delaware. My parents now owned a house, and I moved my budding ham shack
into the basement. I acquired a National NC-109 and a homebrew transmitter, crystal controlled, running a pair of 807s in the final. I didn't build it, but paid 15 bucks for it from an old timer
in town. It worked OK, but I was again stuck on crystal control, and limited to 80 meters. That had to change. In 1962 I found a used Heathkit DX100 and I bought it, scrapping the
homebrew rig. Now I was on all bands I had antennas for (80 and 40, actually) and on CW and AM both. Later that same year I sold that rig and bought a DX100B which had a much more stable VFO for
CW operations. That, too, went by the wayside, as I bought a Heathkit Apache. Then, in 1963, I sold the Apache and bought and built a Heathkit Marauder SSB transmitter. At long last, I
was on sideband! I still had the National NC109 but had acquired an AR88 as well, a receiver I wish I had today! That fall I got married. The girl's brother was a ham, which is how
I met her. And by now I had put a Lafayette HE45B six meter AM rig in the car, along with a halo antenna. With my new brother-in-law, and some others in the Dover area, we started a six
meter 'club' a rather informal coffee gathering of about seven hams who had 6 meter mobile capability. The club was called, interestingly (since I was to wind up eventually in New Mexico) the
Roadrunner Six Meter Club. We usually met in the basement of the home of one of the most interesting guys in ham radio I knew or will ever know. His name was George Lynn, and his call was
K3RMU - "Real Mean and Ugly." Here I have to sidetrack. George was what the amateur radio Technician Class license, which he was, was all about. George was in the Air Force, and
maintained aviation communications equipment during the day. When he came home, he didn't even go into the main floor of the house, but went immediately to the basement, where he remained until
midnight or after. His wife brought him dinner in the full basement, and served our six meter club our snacks. They had five kids and I wondered how they ever got together to make babies.
George's basement was -- I can't adequately describe it. It looked like a secret broadcasting station, tucked away in some hidden communications site. There were at least seven racks, each six
feet tall, of radio equipment, all of it VHF or UHF. There were boxes and boxes of parts, and stacks of parts bins on the desks. George was an experimenter. His pleasure came in
building things, putting them on the air, and then modifying them to make them work better. One of the projects I recall with interest was a 14-tube dual conversion receiver using all 'peanut
tubes.' It was designed, of course, for 220 MHZ. One of the more interesting stories about George comes from the time he built a six meter kilowatt AM transmitter. The time came to
try it on the air. George lived next door to other people, and houses were not far apart. Plus Dover was in a fringe TV area, receiving TV signals from Philadelphia, 80 miles to the north, or
Baltimore or Washington, similar miles to the west. This was not a good place to have high power on six meters. In fact, my brother-in-law and I used to ride around town talking on the six meter
mobile rigs and joking about people sticking their heads out the doorways as we rode by, to see what happened to their TV sets. George had an intercom setup with his wife upstairs. She was a
wonderful woman, plain, and pretty at the same time, and very dedicated. I regret that I do not at the moment recall her name. So George tunes up his six meter AM kilowatt
transmitter. Then he punched the intercom button and asked his wife upstairs if she saw anything on the TV. She confirmed that she did not. George was elated! The rig was apparently
absolutely clean. He could not have hoped for better. He shut the rig down and began figuring out what he could do to make it better. His wife came downstairs. George asked her if she
had seen any trace of interference on the TV and she said, "No, not a trace." He said, incredulous, "Nothing, really, not a thing." She replied. "Not a thing.
Nothing. The screen went black." I wasn't there. But George told me later he nearly fell over. He never put that transmitter back on the air. George was also a trader. I
traded him a 1951 Plymouth sedan for a big VHF AM rig, consisting of the BC639 receiver, the matching 50 watt AM transmitter, the power supply, and a rack to hold them. Another time I traded him a lawn
mower for a HF receiver he had lying around. Late at night George and I, and sometimes others, would get on the air on six meters (without the kilowatt!) and talk. Talk? Well, while
George was transmitting, he was always building, too. So his side of the conversation might run like this: "I'm getting ready to solder that resistor in there, in the bias circuit. Yep,
looks like the solder iron is hot. I'm going to crimp these leads here, like this." He was just talking out loud while he worked, if "work" is the right word. And it isn't; this was
his love. This was reminiscent of the old time radio announcers on late-night AM, saying, "Ah, I'll have another sip of that coffee. Hmmm, sure is good. Well, let's see, now, Dinah Shore
coming up next. But I have to have another taste of that coffee." Drone on. When the FCC created the Technician license, it was to further exploration of the VHF and up ranges, and
to develop new techniques. George, more than anyone I ever met anywhere, lived to do exactly that. He started ATV in the Dover area, and he worked long-haul 220 MHZ back when it was all
AM. And he was one of my very best friends. NEXT - 1964, marriage, stories, moving, and my first kilowatt |
