CHAPTER FIVE That summer of 1957 we moved from Denver to Aurora, Denver's eastern suburb. It put me in a different school district, and in September I enrolled in what
was then Aurora Central High School. Again, I knew no-one in the school, so the process of making friends started anew. And again one of the first people I noticed was a young fellow who wore a
jacket with the letters "K0GSW" on the back. (The zero had a slash through it.) Obviously a ham call sign. I approached him and learned he was indeed a ham. He also introduced me to a
few others, though at the moment I remember only two; Maynard Campbell, K0EPC who was to become one of my closest friends, and a fellow I never really got to know, named Jim. He was a senior, and his
call was K0EGK. But through them I learned there was a school club station in a room just off the science room. The physics/chemistry teacher, Rolla Rissler, was the trustee of the station.
His call sign was W0YRF and the school license was W0SGP. I quickly dubbed that "School's Greatest Program." The station consisted of a Windom (the old kind!) strung across from the physics
room to another wing of the school, and an old Hallicrafters receiver and a Johnson Viking I, with VFO. I was pretty active in the school club and during study halls or other breaks could be found on
20 meter AM frequently. Maynard lived near me, and had a National receiver and a Johnson Viking II. He operated a lot of 160 meters, in a local ragchew net, and soon had me interested in AM
and in 160. Up till then I had mostly worked 80 and 40 meter CW from my home station, which was the ARC5 and a sister unit I had acquired that covered the 3.0 to 4.0 MHZ band. To switch from 40
to 80 meters I had to unplug one ARC5 from the power supply and plug the other in. Since that meant the fresh unit would not be warmed up and stabilized, I soon devised a way to keep both units
fastened on a small wooden block, and the filaments on to both simultaneously. I had planned to put in a rotary switch that would switch the various operating voltages from one to the other but
never got to that project. Instead I traded them for an Eldico TR75TV, a CW transmitter that came to me with a Handbook design clamp tube modulator, and an external VFO. The Eldico required plug in
coils, which meant turning off the HV and draining it down before switching bands, but beyond that it was a fair rig. It ran 75 watts input, and I had a VFO that worked with it, so I could cover 80 and
40 meters better, but I still had no capability on 160 meters. In December of that year, my father received a new assignment. We were going to Newburgh, New York. I was very
unhappy. I had just purchased a Johnson Adventurer transmitter with a VFO of some make I don't recall, but I had not yet put it on the air. We settled in the small mountain village of Highland
Mills, NY, in an old farmhouse. I strung up a random wire and started trying to get on the air. I soon found the wire would not work well without a good tuner. I went scrounging around some
hams in Newburgh, and came out with a Johnson Matchbox and a nice Johnson Ranger I, in trade for my Adventurer and my other junk. I also got a Hallicrafters HT18 exciter in the same deal.
And true to the FCC regs, thinking I was going to be here a while, I once again modified my license to my new address, receiving the call sign WA2AHV. I was shocked! I had not known there
were such call signs! I wrote the FCC to ask them if this was a valid call sign and they wrote back that it was. So I went on the air as WA2AHV, on 75 meter phone and on 80 and 40 meter CW.
But as a senior in high school, keeping my car running and dating girls was taking more and more of my time, and I became nearly inactive for the next three months. Then, in April 1958, I went to
the recruiting center and joined the US Air Force, with a deferment until I graduated in June. One week after graduation I flew to San Antonio Texas to begin basic training. My hamming was put on
hold. .... more to come .... |
