Ham Radio Nostalgia

During my stay in Scotland I did some traveling during my off duty time.  After acquiring my british drivers license in early 1971, I explored the highlands of Scotland, Inverness and visited Glasgow, Aberdeen, and Edinburgh several times.  I also took trips to London, England and France.

In the fall of 1971 I visited Paris for a week with a few of my Navy buddies.  I re-learned a lot of the french that I had learned in junior high and high school.  I acted as a translator for my buddies who were interested in the "culture" of Paris's female population.  The photo below-right shows yours truly at the Eiffel Tower.  I spent the entire week walking all over Paris taking pictures of all the tourist attractions during the day and ventured out to the local pubs with my buddies during the evening hours.  The photo below-left was taken during one of my road trips to London in the spring of 1972.  While in London, I stayed with the brother of a girlfriend and was shown parts of Islington, London that the typical American tourist never saw.  I let my host do most of the driving while I was there.  You really had to be agressive to navigate the round-abouts in London.  One evening I got lost driving in London at night but evenutally found my way back in the wee hours of the morning.

After I returned from my second trip to London in late March 1972, I received orders transfering me to Fort Meade Maryland that was close to home.  This seemed too good to be true.  As it turned out, it was too good to be true and my orders were changed as a result of events that took place while I was away.

After leaving Navy boot camp in December 1969, I was trained to be a Communications Technician in Navy 'A' School, and served in that capacity during my 25 months in Scotland.  When I graduated from 'A' school, Communications Technician (CT) was a critical rating due to the shortage of CTs in the field. At that time, the Navy was offering CTs a $25,000 re-enlistment bonus.  In 1971, my room mate at RAF Edzell took advantage of this.  By 1972 all of that had changed.

When I returned from London in March 1972, I learned that due to an excess number of personnel in the Communication Technician (CT) rating, the Navy had decided to convert the ratings of a select group of CTs.  I was one of the unfortunate ones who fell into this group.  As a result of this, my orders were amended and my rating was changed from CTR to Yeoman (YN).  My new orders sent me to a ship, the USS Grand Canyon whose home port was in Newport, Rhode Island.  Before I left Scotland, I was given the opportunity to re-enlist for an additional 6 years and avoid this "mess".  By that time, I knew that serving in the Navy was not what I wanted to do, so I turned the offer down.

During my 25 month stay in Scotland, GM5ASI made 2184 contacts in 191 countries, all 50 states, and 38 zones (never worked zone 19 or 34).  All of my operating was "casual", with no contesting (this was before I became interested in contesting).  There were no DX bulletins, and long before PCs and packet DX spotting networks.  Sometimes casual operating was a difficult thing to do, espically when the band was open to the U.S.  As a result I received some impromptu training in handling pileups of U.S. stations.  Even though I was (and still am) a CW operator, I made twice as many contacts on SSB.  Looking back on it, I think this was due to the "novelty" of operating phone because my home station at the time was CW only, and I had to send CW with a hand key (a lot of work when handling logging by hand and sending by hand when working a pileup).  The two tables below summarize my ham radio activity.

QSO breakout 

BAND	CW	SSB	BAND TOTAL
80	136	259	395
40	126	54	180
20	298	725	1023
15	233	323	556
10	3	23	26
TOTAL	796	1384	2184

Zone, State, and Country breakout

BAND	ZONES	STATE		STATE TOTAL	COUNTRY		COUNTRY TOTAL
		CW	SSB		CW	SSB
80	17	16	8	19	34	49	62
40	17	13	1	13	51	14	57
20	38	29	47	48	83	122	153
15	32	36	36	45	47	75	100
10	7	1	8	8	3	8	10
TOTAL	38	43	49	50	111	170	191

I left Scotland and returned home for 30 days of leave in late June 1972.  The photo below shows my station in the early seventies, after my tour in Scotland.  To run phone (AM), I added an Eico 730 plate modulator and a Drake 2B receiver  which I purchased shortly after returning home from Scotland in June 1972.  By this time, I was in need of a real operating table!  In July 1972, I returned to the Customs  House in Baltimore and passed the extra exam.  The hardest part of the exam was sending morse code at 20 words per minute with a hand key.  In those days, you had to send and receive the code at 20 words per minute for one minute with no errors. You were also required to have a General or Advanced class license for at least 2 years before you were eligible to take the extra exam.  Because of my Navy tour of duty overseas, I had to wait an extra year before I could take the Extra exam.

KG4AN shack door sign

After leaving Scotland, I finished up my Navy duty in Newport, Rhode Island from August 1972 to August 1973.  I was stationed on the U.S.S. Grand Canyon, a World War II destroyer tender which had been converted to a repair ship.  When I reported aboard, the ship had just returned from a 6 month deployment in the Mediterranean Sea.  During most of my time on board ship, it was under going extensive overhaul.  We spent a few months in dry dock in Boston and several months at the Todd Shipyard in Brooklyn New York.  In February 1973 the ship left Brooklyn to return to it's home port in Newport, Rhode Island.  During my off duty time in Newport, I operated from the base club station WA1EXP.  The station consisted of a Collins S-Line and a dipole antenna for 40 and 80 meters.  My radio activity from Newport was somewhat limited.  I did not have open access to the station but had to make arrangements ahead of time to use the station.

In March 1973, the ship left Newport for Guantanamo Bay Cuba to undergo sea trials.  The trip to GITMO took 5 days, three of which I was sea sick.  By the end of the third day at sea I acquired my sea-legs.  Immediately upon arriving in GITMO, I searched out the base ham radio club station, KG4AN who I had contacted from Scotland.  After checking with the Officer on watch, I was told I could not obtain permission to use the station because I was not permanently stationed there.  

During the 6 weeks in GITMO from March to April 1973, we conducted sea trails/war games during the week days and had free time in the evenings when not on duty.  I visited KG4AN several times and got to know some of the operators.  Most of their on-the-air time was spent running phone patches back to the states.  The photo above-left of the KG4AN shack door is a photo of a large QSL card that was on the club station's shack door.  Below is a photo of the radio shack and antennas and an interesting sign I saw on the base.

KG4AN radio shack and antennas		An interesting sign on Gitmo base

USS Grand Canyon at Todd Shipyard, Brooklyn, NY 1972