RF Biography
My father learned Morse code as a boy scout but had never obtained an amateur radio license. Knowing the code does not make you a ham, but he knew enough about amateur radio to have been one of my first sources of information when, at the age of 10, I first got interested in amateur radio. It was around that time that my older brother brought home a couple of old ham radio books after visiting a ham who lived in our neighborhood, an ARRL Handbook from 1964 and an ARRL antenna book from 1945. I still recall the cracked brown pages and smell of that old book. It may have been the books and the sketchy stuff my brother was talking about that originally got me started in amateur radio. My father eventually did sign up for a class and got his novice ticket in 1982. I don't think he ever made a contact and never renewed it. My uncle N6WDE and his wife KC6JUQ live in California and are also hams.
In the early seventies, my best friend's father had a Pace CB radio. Actually, two of them. One in his pickup and one in his house. This was years before C.W. McCoy popularized the method of communication in song and the ensuing CB craze. About the only people you could talk to on the radio were truckers, who were always willing to talk. At that time you needed a license to operate on the citizen's band. There were no testing requirements and the minimum qualifications were U.S. citizenship and at least 18 years of age. But you had to have the piece of paper issued by the FCC to operate on CB frequencies.
My family owned a Summer camp and after years of stringing and re-stringing army surplus phone wires and equipment, my father had the great idea to link two geographically separate parts of the camp by CB radio. He applied for a citizen's band radio license and was issued KXC1055. The CB craze hit about a year after we got our equipment and as a result, I had lots of people to talk to. I spent countless hours talking to neighborhood friends on the air and installing radios and antennas in our cars. We went through a series of cheap CB's over the years. Realistic Mini Twenty Three, Sears 23, Realistic Rover 3-channel walkie, Realistic TRC-25a walkies, Claricon Ranger.
By the time I was 12, the power limitation of CB and the mentality of most CBers was making the experience rather miserable. In the Winter of 1976, an amateur radio class was offered at our Community Youth Center and I saw this as a ticket to the 'polite' bands so I signed up. I learned the code and the Novice theory with about 6 other ham hopefuls. I found a neighborhood ham named Roy, W3AFA, to administer my novice exam. In those days, the novice test was administrated by a General class or above, was valid for two years and was non-renewable. All other exams were administered at FCC field offices and were valid for 10 years. I passed the 5 words per minute Morse code test and then completed the theory portion of the exam at Roy's house. He put the exam in an envelope and mailed it off to Gettysburg. About 3 months later, in April 1977, I was given Novice class privileges with the callsign WB3HWN.
It would be several months before I could get a station together. My father gave me a Heath RX-1 Mohawk receiver as a birthday present, which although large, was a very nice receiver and looked practically brand new. I ran a long wire from the house out to a pole on the detached garage and I was picking up stations from around the world. I found a Heath DX-60B and a crystal at Hamtronics in Trevose, PA and went about building a dipole for 15 meters using that old ARRL antenna book from 1945. I hung the dipole in the attic of our house. It took a few days of trying, but I finally made a contact on 80 meters with WB2QJY in Astoria, NY. Yes, an 80 meter contact with a 15 meter half wave dipole. I was unaware that crystals came cut for low frequencies and that harmonics were used to resonate them on the higher bands which were even multiples of the lower bands. Crystals cost about $10 apiece at the time and I wanted as many as I could get. I eventually amassed 8 of them. One came with the transmitter, a couple came from another ham, and I bought the rest over time.
That summer I took all of the equipment up to our summer camp and fabricated a true half wave dipole for 80 meters. I set up the shack in an actual shack and managed to make a few contacts on the occasions that I got to operate. My father found a Heath HG-10 VFO in the penny saver went down to Scranton to pick it up for me. I had a few problems in the shack that summer and I never got a chance to use the VFO. The roof of the shack leaked and mice built a nest in the transmitter. I guess the urine caused some corrosion of some sort and it stopped loading. After the summer I took the transmitter down to heath on the Schuykil Blvd and didn't get it back for 5 months. I think the repair cost as much as the transmitter cost originally, but it was working again. I racked up several 80 meter contacts that winter and a few on 15 meter as well. I never did get VFO working.
When it came time for my novice ticket to expire, the FCC changed the rules and I was issued a new novice ticket which was valid for an additional 5 years. I was not active when that ticket expired and I hadn't noticed until after the grace period. The high school where my father worked was starting an amateur radio club, so I donated my equipment to the club. I kept my key.
While at college in Prescott, Arizona, I got a job as an on-air personality (that's what commercial radio people call it) for one of the radio stations in town. KNOT 1450 AM and KNOT 98.3 FM (technically two stations). I worked both FM with an adult contemporary format, and AM 'Mile High Country'. That was a lot of fun and I got to control the transmitters and take feeds off of the satellites, etc.
I met a guy at school who was running 2 meter packet with a digipeter and my interest in amateur radio was renewed. I did not have the money or the means to get back into it, so as a surrogate, I got a Radio Shack Pro 2020 VHF/UHF scanner and a Radio Shack magnetic mount mobile scanner antenna. I had wanted a scanner ever since I was a lad and had heard my best friend's father's scanner with crystals for the local volunteer fire company. The Pro 2020 was a 20 channel programmable desktop scanner which I still use for air, fire, state police and ham activity monitoring. I had a coupel of CB's thorugh college: Hy Gain Hy Range II 23 channel and a K40 trunk mount/mag mount with a Radio Shack TRC-453 SSB rig which I still use on road trips today.
After college, I bought a Radio Shack DX-440 digital short-wave radio and played with it a bit, but never really got into it because of limited antenna and the annoying tune muting of the DX-440 when dialing through frequencies. I learned of a mod to eliminate the 'chuffing' and I performed the mod and it was a completely different radio because of it. I can't believe they shipped it originally like that as a 'feature'. The local county police department moved to 800 MHz, so I bought an AOR 1000 wide band hand held scanner. But, the county police use MDTs so extensively that it renders voice monitoring boring.
My brother's father in-law was a ham K4AUW, and when my brother and his wife moved to Brazil, he decided to get his license. He became N3XCM. Well, that lit a fire under my butt. I started studying for the Technician Plus license and in the Spring of 1996 I took and passed my 13 wpm and novice and technician theory at the Pentagon in Arlington, VA. I was issued the callsign KF4KHM about two and a half weeks later. While waiting for my license to be posted to the FCC callsign server on the web, I bought a Yaesu FT-11R 2 meter HT. The day I saw my callsign posted, I had my first amateur radio VOICE communications. About 6 month later, I took and passed the general class test with the Mount Vernon ARC in Alexandria, VA.
My wife, unbeknownst to me, secretly studied for her no-code technician license and as a Christmas 1997 present she got her callsign, KF4NYU. It was a total surprise to me and I am happy that she did it on her own. Well, that meant that we HAD to get another 2 meter radio so we purchased a Yaesu FT-50 dual band HT. I had already been planning to get either an Icom 706 or a Yaesu FT-900 HF rig and I had finally decided on the Yaesu. We picked up the two radios at HRO in Delaware on our way home from my folks' house in Pennsylavnia. Great Christmas.
The first antenna I put up was a homebrew 20 meter dipole. It stretched from the wall in our bedroom to the hinge on another bedroom door down the hall. The contacts started rolling in but it was clear that I had to get the wire up higher. So, I put it in the attic. It still wasn't high enough, but I managed to get California and lots of Southwestern U.S. with it. A few months later, I pickup up a 1/4 wave sloper for 160 through 30 meters and hung it up in back of the house. I had a difficult time getting the SWR down on it. I also had a problem with television interference. It seems the lower end of my sloper was about 10 feet from the cable TV distribution box for our block. I picked up a low-pass filter at the Vienna Winterfest, but it didn't seem to offer any relief.
When it came time to order QSL cards, I decided that I wanted to have my old call back, so I applied for WB3HWN under the vanity callsign program as a previously issued call. I paid the $50 and I received my old call about a month and a half later.
In the late 2000's I purchased a Radio Shack PRO-46 handheld scanner from the local newspaper. A trusty analog scanner with really good audio.
I ran into a really nice Heathkit HW-101 at our community yard sale in 2009. It was a lot of fun for $100 that I couldn't pass up.
