Passed Along By Others Updated: 27 Feb 2008
Phil Wilson K4LO (then WA6GKJ) shared this:
Marty N6VI recalls seeing Don drive in to Henry Radio with his mobile high-power HF CW rig in the car. Marty worked there in his college days. Imagine how wide-eyed he must have been seeing that rig in Don's car! I seem to recall seeing pictures and a write up about that mobile rig in one of the ham mags back then.
Kurt W6PH says, "One of my favorite W6AM stories is in a 1935 QST when he took a
bunch of VHF equipment to the top of Mt Whitney for several days (4 or 5?) and
made a handful of contacts. This was in the days when there was a pack
station at Hunter Flat, now known as the Whitney Portal. Several mules were used to take the equipment up there. The article discussed the possibility of using a "relay" station on top of a mountain to relay VHF comm between the Bay area and SoCal. Repeaters came along many years later."
Albert WR6R remembers Don's Johnson 2000Invader "transceiver" (mentioned by N6TJ elsewhere on this site). Does anyone have a picture of that? The name alone must have been good for 5-6 dB in the pileups!
George K5TR passed along this picture that he thinks is W6RW and W9WNV at the W6AM station.
Jan N6AW: "I stayed at the ranch after Don passed away and dismantled the place in 1986. There were 4,000 feet of telephone poles to take down; not to mention 17 miles of copperweld wire in the air!
Don & I rewired his rhombic selection switch in 1982 so it followed the great circle chart sequentially when selecting antennas. That and a few other changes made the station easier to operate and I won a number of contests from up there."
From Steve N6TT: "I used to operate [W6AM] in the 60's as young as 12 yrs old. Don would come pick me up along with another local ham Steve WB6PKA at the time, I was WB6SSO and we would be permitted to operate the station for as long as we wanted or until he got tired of us hanging around One time he caught Steve and I using our callsigns to further our DX records. I think we were working EU on 80 mtrs cw at sunset...He said I told you no using your callsigns. Well I could go on and on. I did write a short note to Jan Perkins when he wrote his book and he mentioned some of the stuff I just told you in his book under my old call N7AHN.But finally, years later when he died around 1986 I came back to LA and was working for the operating engineers local 12 running bull dozers, loaders, etc. I got dispatched to his job of all places and I remember taking down the telephone poles. Weird huh? The other ops would ask me what kind of freak lived here HI HI...I would hook on to some wire with the back teeth of my D9 dozer and take off across those acres pulling the wire from the ground...Miles and miles of wire as you know."
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