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W6HYU was my 1st call-sign, received in January, 1950. I was 16, a high
school junior at Montebello, CA. My home-brew 807 rig ran "class-C" at 50
watts plate input power and was screen-grid amplitude modulated. A 7-Mhz
crystal oscillator was frequency-quadrupled to drive the 807 at 28.808 MHz.
The antenna, a folded dipole, was fashioned with 300-ohm TV twin lead.
Although a low-pass filter attenuated higher harmonics, TVI was a MAJOR
problem. Neighbors where amazingly tolerant of this young "experimenter." My receiver was an ARC-5 (WW2 surplus) modified as a down-converter, feeding a broadcast band radio at 1515 KHz. My first QSO was with Orange, Texas. He gave me "Q5, S7!" I can still feel the excitement! Those days will never return, but linked digital radio is providing a great encore!!! My current call sign is W7DHS. My favorite mode is Pactor, a handshaking protocol that produces error free copy with no need for my repeating. (The computer does the repeating when needed.) |