During the late 20's and early 30's I was known as that "crazy kid" who could take a chunk of galena, an oatmeal box, and some wire from a Ford ignition coil and bring the world into the farmer's home.

Always searching for better reception I hooked my antenna post to the single wire telephone line that came into our home. Hang your fones on the chair; you could hear loud and clear without wearing them. Not only could you hear, but so could everyone on the party line whenever they tried to telephone including  "central" about 3 miles down the road.

Miss Nettie the central operator told me years later that when she was not busy she would plug her pbx into our line and get the news.  Of course that had to go and so did I; Mother and dad, realizing that my interest in the family farm was not exactly what they had planned, sent me to a small self-help college in Parkville, Mo. to gain a little "larning". One of my jobs was caretaker of the observatory. The time signal used by the astronomy class came directly from Greenich, England via a National SW-3 tuned to the 2000 meter band: Yes, the antenna was 2000 meters long strung over the hill on telephone poles.

The college had a naval reserve club. The operator told me he would help me get a license if I would pull a watch for him now and then. Thus was born W9OGP. (later W4OGP)

A short time after graduation I was assigned to the first armored division at Ft. Knox as Communications SGT.,
one of the the problems that arose was that the wire crew could not keep up with the tanks, whose mobility barely exceeded that of the infantry. (A wire crew was a long stick with a man at each end and a roll of field wire in the middle running full speed up the rocks "laying wire"). It was decided that maybe the airplanes could lay wire faster. I have no idea how many miles of wire the planes laid, but I never fould even a foot of it on the ground!

Four and a half years later after Africa and European campaigns, the army finally realized what a colossal error they had made in making me a Master Sgt., and sent me home. The FCC said forget W9OGP, from now on you are W4OGP.

I put up a 136 foot end fed zepp that worked well for 40 years. Talking to a VK in Sydney, Australia who was running 35 watts and putting an R7 signal into Kentucky, he told me about his 80 meter rhombic. An 80 meter rhombic is a long, long piece of soft-drawn #12 copper! Planning to build one, I read in the handbook about the new "Inverted Vee". The "Inverted Vee" put a stop to my long lines and to this long story (about 60 years).

Sam W4OGP

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