Boat
Anchor Website
The
Northwest AM Group web pages
Hammarlund PRO-310
3870
kc – 7290 kc – 29,000 kc
Thanks
for looking …
My name is John Morris. Current location is Bellevue, WA, a suburb of Seattle.
I got my first ham ticket in 1964 as WN9OGX. I was only 14 at the time and a high school
freshman in Pontiac, IL. After a great
first year as a novice, several of my neighbor friends, who also had an
interest in electronics, and I went to Chicago to take our General class
tickets. All of us failed the
theory. Within a month, we were back in
the “windy city” and the rest, as they say, is history. I became WA9OGX.
I owe my interest in Ham Radio to my high school
freshman Algebra teacher, Ted Voss, K9QOF (SK). One day he brought to his class a Hallicrafters T.O. Keyer. (the
purpose slips me now) Wow, that was “cool”.
He invited all interested parties over to his house to look at his
station. It was the image of the
filaments of his DX-100B and HQ-170 that motivated my friends and I to get into
Ham Radio.
In those early years, my first rig was a Knight
T-150 and R-100A. They worked fine on CW but … well, you know. In the spring of 1966 or 67, I made a deal
with my dad (half of the upcoming summer’s earnings) to get into the new SSB
era. We bought one of the first Swan
350’s from AES in Milwaukee, WI. With
that and a three element Hornet beam, I worked the world and lined the wall
with QSL’s. I then started playing with
amplifiers and built my first rf amp, a single 4-1000 running a lot of voltage
on the plate… The power supply used a
pair of 872’s so the shack glowed purple a lot. At 16 yrs old, I was having the time of my life. Then college came and ham radio took a
hiatus.
After graduating from college from the University
of Illinois, I spent 8 years in frigid Minnesota with little radio
activity. That is the genesis of WBØRLD. It wasn’t until 1979, when we moved to the Seattle area, did I
pick up Ham Radio where I left off. My
job in sales kept me in my car a lot so I purchased a TS-120S and mobiled all
over the Northwest for several years.
That came to an end, though, when my company cars started having more
plastic than metal. In my home
hamshack, however, I was busy driving my 4-1000 with the TS-120S and a matching
remote VFO. I came upon a beautiful
pair of 4-400’s in a very nice case so I traded the 4-1000 for a utility
trailer. (see picture) I also became interested in antennas for my favorite 40 mtr
activity. I installed a phased inverted
Vee system that worked phenomenally.
The low sunspot cycle of the late 80’s and early
nineties, along with a location change, put my operating time at a standstill. It wasn’t till I met a couple of radio
enthusiasts at a friend’s party in 1998, did I ask about hamfests and if they
still took place. I started to go to
several of them and got my first BoatAnchor, a Hammarlund
HQ-140XA. That opened the floodgates of BA activity.
See the following pages for proof….
(In late 2002 I took advantage of no one owning
K7RLD and petitioned to change to that call. It’s much easier for my colleagues
to remember HI)
For Sale
Receivers
Transmitters
Mobiling