My "Elmer" was ,then W2MBU, Hy Davidowitz. (Hy lost his original call sign due to a clerical error ... he forgot to renew his licence in time! I don't recall his new call.) Hy got a lot of Brooklyn hams started, and administered quite a few novice exams. He also bought, repaired and traded used ham gear. Many a ham's first receiver and / or transmitter was obtained via W2MBU. Hy didn't make much profit, if any, from this. My HQ110C receiver was obtained from Hy.
My first station had the above mentioned Hammerlund HQ110C receiver, a Multi-Elmac AF-67 transmitter (with a home brew X-TV power supply), and an EF Johnson Viking Matchbox (from Hy). The matchbox was really needed, as I lived in an apartment house and had to make due with random wire antennas. The transmitter was obtained at New York City's Harrisons Electronics store during their Washington's birthday sale. It was a pile of junk, though I didn't know it at the time. Still I got the thing to work. Only $20 which though it was quite a bit of money at the time was still a bargain compared to a new Heath DX60. The AF67 was a mobile phone transmitter from the '50s. I latter found out that my transmitter (and all the others in the pile that day at the store) had burned out modulation transformers.
My first phone rig, after getting my Advanced license was a Heathkit SB-102B which I built myself. It was one of many Heathkits that I assembled during the years. (mm1 v.o.m., GR54 sw radio, 21" color tv, fet voltmeter, am/fm radio, digital alarm clock). After getting it finished, on my first contact, I was told "that's the best SSB signal I ever heard!".
Around 1973 I started fooling with SSTV after Hy had given me an old 5FP7 crt. I designed and built my own SSTV monitor (based on several other designs from QST, 73, and CQ articles). K2IRK transferred some photos to tape using his Robot equipment and I was on the air with SSTV. About this time I attended my first Dayton Hamfest. (I last was at Dayton in 1994, and how it has grown in the 20 years in-between!) Dayton was the Meca for SSTV in the 70's.
I met quite a few local hams my age on the air. Most of use were in high school or college at the time. We formed an on the air club ... the RSGB (Radio Society of Greater Brooklyn). WA2IYH, WB2CGE, WB2QBC, WA2RRG (now WA4ZLW), WB2JSJ (aka WB1GQR), WA2YKV, WB2FIG, WB2ONZ, WB2PVC, (and quite a few others) and myself founded this club. It was at first a contest club, but soon had other activities such as holding auctions, running bunny hunts, and making lots of QRM. In fact... that was the name of our club newsletter, QRM!. The RSGB contested field day at the former Floyd Benett Naval Air Field (now Gateway national park) in Brooklyn. The RSGB replaced the then defunct Flatbush Radio Club, although a few members of this former club still got together for field day and the VHF QSL contents.
I went to college at Brooklyn Polytechnic. The radio club there had the call sign K2KT. Anyone remember them? Our station was on the roof of the building in a small room next to the elevator hoist. We had a tri-bander on the roof plus trap dipoles for 80/40.
Two meter FM operation got started in the 70's. The Drake TR-22 was one of the most popular FM rigs. I had a Standard handi-talkie purchased at Ramco Electronics on Canal Street. (Hey Mel and Dave where are you today!) One of the first repeaters in NYC was WA2SUR, we called it the 'sewer'. The nickname was a good one as most of New York City's lids hung out on the sewer. WA2SUR put his machine on a one megahertz split instead of the usual 600 khz claiming less intermod would result. A few other machines followed his lead, but when George gave up the repeater the idea sort of died out.
The Brooklyn story would not be complete without
the story of WCPR, the most famous pirate radio station in recent times.
Pirate radio, while illegal, was usually a harmless vice that the FCC wasted
it's manpower trying to stamp out. Most radio pirates were CBer's
and teenage ham's with just enough knowledge to get themselves into trouble.
My friend Gary (no, I won't print his call sign here) started WGOR
FM, using an old SCR522 driven by an FM modulated
ARC5 transmitter/vfo, on 108 mhz. Then one day our radio club, the
RSGB was given a ham estate to sell. Mostly old test equipment and
such, but also a real old Collins transmitter. It had plug in coils
to change bands, covered from 160 to 10 meters,
had two 807's in the final modulated by Push-Pull parallel 6L6's.
(Anyone know what rig this was?) Well....the
rig was sold to two high school kids who put WCPR (aka WFAT) pirate radio
on the air at 1610khz. They were heard up and down the east coast,
and made it across the pond to England! They
took phone calls on the air by using the phone companies Loop-Back test
numbers. Their antenna was an end feed wire about one wavelength
long and about 200 feet up in the air between two tall buildings.
Perry and John were busted several times by
the FCC who never took their transmitter away! (The station was in an apartment
house on the 23 floor of a complex in a bad
Brooklyn neighborhood. The elevators seldom worked and the FCC agents
didn't want to lug the 200 pound rig down the stairs!)