Roger’s Remembrances

My entrance into ham radio and engineering started in late grade-school days. One Christmas Mom and Dad gave Bob and me an electric train. It had a transformer (changed 110 volts to lower voltages used by the train) that we found could be used for other things – like a “telegraph” key and sounder.

In Hutchinson
It was probably Brother Bob that first learned (a merit badge in Boy Scouts?) how to drive a nail into a board, wind a few hundred turns of wire around it, fasten a strip of tin just above the nail for a “sounder”, and connect the winding in series with another strip of tin used as a key. Powered by the transformer, the ensemble provided a nice dot and dash buzz in step with the key pushes. We made several sets of these, some for the neighbor kids next door. I don’t know where we got the wire.

Say, RC — if these telegraph circuits are too complicated for you, lemme know, and I’ll help you with their intricacies.

We could connect two units so each key sounded just the other buzzer, or either key would sound both buzzers. The latter was the preferred result, and I liked figuring out ways to do it. We played with these things from kitchen to front room and between our house and the Green’s (neighbor kids). Somewhere along the way I just sorta slid into the idea that this electrical stuff was for me.

In junior high I saw an ad in Boys Life or Open Road for Boys for a two-tube short wave receiver, with which I could listen to “foreign countries and police broadcasts”. It required no batteries and cost about $3.00, including an earphone. I ordered one.

It was a real cheapie. One of the tubes was used as a half-wave rectifier, the other as a regenerative detector (making it functionally a one-tube receiver). The tuning condenser (not called “capacitors” in those days) was a hinge arrangement, driven by a “dial” that went round and round many times to pull the leaf up and down. In spite of this primitive approach, it worked.

I was thrilled to hear a broadcast from way down in Quito, Ecuador! And a couple of local hams. I was getting hooked on radio.

About the next year – somewhere around ninth grade – I bought a bona fide “two-tube” receiver kit. It was a neat little receiver – with a regular chassis and a front panel that mounted a Kurz-Kasch vernier dial with tuning condenser and regeneration control. Two type 56 tubes functioned as a regenerative detector followed by an audio amplifier. It came complete with a set of plug-in coils for tuning from the regular broadcast band on down to 20 meters. Somewhere I got a transformer for the 2.5 volt heaters (it may have been part of the kit) and used a 45-volt “B” battery for plate supply. It worked real well.

I fixed up a big packing crate as a desk in a corner of the north bedroom as my short-wave listening post. (Wish I had a picture of that!) I began to find hams at several spots on the dial and several spots in the country. I was really getting hooked.

During one of his visits to us Uncle Clyde inspected my listening post and was interested that I had to buy “B” batteries at intervals. He made a couple of phone calls and then took me over to a store where he bought me a second-hand power supply to take the place of the “B” battery. It was a real step ahead! Later, he sent me a big box of radio receiver parts he had used in the teens and early ’20s. I wish I had asked him more about his radio days. He had not been a ham operator is about all I know of it.

In the ’30s most hams built their own receivers and transmitters, using parts ordered from the ham supply houses. Most Hutchinson hams bought from Allied in Chicago, Burstein-Applebee in Kansas City, or Radio Labs in Kansas City. Some of the richer hams had commercially manufactured receivers. There were only about 50,000 — I’m not sure of this number — hams in the world so the market was limited.

By the time my junior year of high school came along, I was interested in branching out into amateur radio. Bob Remington, who had been a ham (W9GDS) for a few years, gave me encouragement and guidance. Also, Uncle Clyde told me that if I could get a license, he would send me $50 to help buy parts to build my first transmitter. I listened to code on the ham bands, bought a license manual from ARRL (American Radio Relay League), and boned up for the exam. Clem Strong, a Hutchinson ham W9LRR (the “Zero” call area was years away), administered the code and written test. I passed the then-required 10 words per minute, and Clem sent my written exam on to the FCC.

A few weeks later I received my license, with the amateur call W9UPH. I was elated! I sent Uncle Clyde a telegram telling him of my new call. He replied with a telegram; and soon after, the promised $50 check arrived. Oh, it was fun making out the list of parts for that first transmitter, knowing I had the money for it. Bob Remington had suggested a crystal controlled two-stage rig would be a good start for me. It used a QST design with a type 59 as a tri-tet oscillator, followed by an 841 final amplifier. It had just a few watts power. I sent off orders for the required parts.

I used “breadboard” construction for the transmitter — arranged as three shelves in a desk-top rack with a 3-ply wood panel. All-metal construction was beyond my expertise and finances.

Dad had built a garage for Lizzie attached to the rear of our regular garage. I built a “radio shack” in the rear of Lizzie’s garage. It was not very elegant but kept out the rain. I started my hamming days in that shack. However, there was no heat, so it was no good for most of the winter. I moved into the basement of the house, ending up in an enclosed room with a heater. Dad helped me with the construction.

I made a couple of 45′ “extended A” transmitting antenna masts from long (25′ I think) two-by-fours. (A 2 x 4 then was much, much more substantial than the flimsy object that passes as a 2 x 4 today!!) I put steps so I could climb to the top and fix the pulley. It was not a very safe caper, but the guys were strong; and I did not try it in windy weather.

Most hams used crystal-controlled transmitters, so after a “CQ” it took a little looking around to see if you were being called. You had better luck if you stuck close to your own frequency. It took me a few months to catch on to that procedure.

I made many CW (code) contacts and thoroughly enjoyed the process. I rebuilt the two-tube regenerative receiver on a larger chassis and added a power amplifier audio stage so I could use a loud speaker. However, it was cursed with the “hand capacity effect” — as you moved your hand closer or farther from the chassis, the received signal changed frequency. If the band was very crowded, you could lose track of which signal you were talking to. I really did wish for a better receiver. Then came high school graduation.

Mom, who had heard me complain about the erratic signals, did some research work with Bob Remington and for a high school graduation present bought me an “All Star” kit. Several of the ham-part manufacturers had gotten together to produce this kit, a simple superhet with plug-in coils and a neat illuminated band-spread dial. For code reception it included a beat-frequency oscillator. AND NO HAND CAPACITY!!! As receivers went in the late ’30s, the All Star was a reasonable performer.

Bob Remington sold me some parts with which I upgraded the transmitter for voice. I also added another stage (a 211) for about 100 watts input. This opened new doors of enjoyment. I still have the double-button carbon mike I started with. Phone operation was all amplitude modulation (single-sideband was years away), so heterodyne “whistles” were a big nuisance during phone contacts. By the late ’30s some factory-built receivers had a crystal filter that could phase out an interfering heterodyne.

Metal tubes were introduced to the radio industry in the late ’30s. The 6L6 was a very popular tube in the ham ranks. I used one as the oscillator in one version of the transmitter.

I operated with CW on 80 and 40 meters, phone on 160 meters. If the bands were crowded, I liked CW better. From the very first, I copied code with pencil and paper and never became much good at “copying in the head”. Sometimes after a losing game of football or basketball I turned on the rig and salved my wounds with some CW contacts until the wee hours.

Most of my activity was just CW “rag chewing” on either 40 or 80 meters. No phone operation was allowed on 40 meters. I tried a little DXing (contact with foreign countries) but never got much interested in that phase of hamming.

Hutchinson and environs had about a dozen active hams. We enjoyed visiting each others shacks, and I became acquainted with most of them. Bob Remington, Clem Strong, and I sometimes drove down to Pretty Prairie to visit W9VRZ, Earl Bush. (See In Lincoln below.)

It came time to leave Hutch for Chicago. I thought it would be fun to take a portable rig along so I could talk to hams back in Hutch and to some of my ham friends from K-State. I built a portable transmitter, consisting of power supply and two-stage transmitter — CW only. It was about the size of a portable typewriter. I planned to buy a factory-built receiver in Chicago, so sold the All Star receiver for just a few dollars to a neighbor friend down the street.

I don’t remember what I did with all the rest of the ham gear. I think Mom ended up giving it away to someone. Also, I may have left the job of taking down the antenna masts to Dad. Ham days in Hutch were over.

In Chicago
As recorded in CHICAGO DAYS, my first rooming house in the Windy City was at 6219 North Winthrop. The land lady agreed to let me string an antenna wire out the second floor window, up over the roof, and towards the back of the house. It worked quite well. I bought a second-hand Hammarlund HQ-120-X receiver via mail order from Henry’s in Butler, Missouri. It was late-thirties state-of-the-art. I had several dozen contacts in the summer and fall months of 1941. A few were with Ray Meisenheimer back with RCA in New Jersey.

Then along came December 7, 1941 — the Jap attack on Pearl Harbor. The FCC immediately issued bulletins forbidding any ham radio activity. You also had to certify to the FCC that you did not have an operable radio transmitter available to you. Hams who had big relay rack transmitters could “seal” them up in approved methods. I took the simplest procedure — I dismantled the transmitter and notified the FCC I did not have a transmitter. Ham radio days for me were over for about 15 years. I used the HQ-120-X receiver for the “family radio” for the next several years, since it included the regular broadcast band.

In Lincoln
Soon after WW II ended, hams were allowed back on the air. However, I was busy starting a family and moving to a new job in Lincoln. I had no time to even think of ham radio — but after about 10 years the ham bug started to nibble again.

In 1956 I applied for a license and was reassigned my old call but with the new “zero area” prefix — WØUPH. I was WØUPH until the late ’60s. After passing the Extra Class exam, I applied for a “two-letter” call. (When I applied, you could not ask for a specific call — the ensuing “KK” was a happenstance.) In March of 1969 I became WØKK and have used that call ever since.

Dick Wakeman/WØWBE, with whom I was working at L.T.T., sold me his kilowatt transmitter, in a good relay rack and a pair of 304-TL’s for a final. I was not so much interested in the high power as I was with getting a good rack, power supplies, and modulator. I rebuilt the exciter portion (still crystal-controlled) and went on the air with a pair of 6146’s (100 watts input).

I was interested to see how components had changed since I last built anything. Condensers were now called “capacitors”. By-pass capacitors were now of the “disk” variety — unheard of in the late 30s. New miniature tubes were available to conserve space. Strange tube numbers showed up – like 6c4 and 5763. The old 6L6 workhorse of the late 30s had been supplanted with the improved 6146. War surplus parts were available from many sources. The 304-TL had been used extensively in military transmitters and was a very popular high-power tube for hams. In Class AB operation the lack of grid current to the final drastically reduced VHF spurious radiation.

In 1956 we were still at 720. I fixed a corner of the basement with a table as an operating position. The receiver was still the old HQ-120-X. I tried to keep hamming activities at a low level, and after other responsibilities had been handled. It was good to get back on the air, even at reduced activity. I bought a used 50-foot telephone pole from L.T.T., and they sent a crew out to set it in the yard at 720. I intended to use it to support a vertical antenna, but we moved to 2115 before I got that done.

Crystal-controlled operation was obviously not the way to go, so I rebuilt the oscillator stage as a VFO (variable-frequency oscillator). It took several versions to get it stable.

One evening I heard W9VRZ (who had become WØVRZ) from Hutchinson days calling CQ. Earl had a high-pitched voice, easy to recognize. I gave him a call, and he came back with, “Is that old Under Papa’s House I hear?”!! It had been over 15 years since our last contact. Earl died a few years after that.

When we moved from 720 to 2115 in 1958, all the ham gear moved with us — including the 50-foot telephone pole. The Plant Superintendent of L.T.T. sent a crew to take the pole out at 720 and set it in place at 2115. This was without mishap, though when they removed the pole at 720, it did swing into the house with a small thud. It gave Mary a start, but fortunately there was no damage.

The ham shack at 2115 was established in the east side of the basement. I spent a large part of hamming time in rebuilding and improving the transmitter. Hams were starting to use “single sideband, suppressed carrier” as an improved mode of communication for phone operation. (Those cursed heterodynes would be a thing of the past.) QST had many construction articles on the subject, and I decided to build my own band-switching SSB/CW transmitter.

The SSB homebrew rig took about a year and a half to complete. It was the most involved project I ever tried, but did turn out quite well. It was a whole relay rack full of power supplies, audio stages, mixing stages, VOX and keying controls, RF exciter, and power amplifier. It ended with the 304-TLs, which I used at about 800 watts input.

Recently, I decided to clear out some of the ham shack stuff no longer in use and not wanted by any one else. The SSB transmitter, on which I had labored so long, was taken to the dump. It was the end of a beloved phase of hamming.

I got on the air sporadically. There were family, church, and job responsibilities that came first. I tried to keep my priorities straight. I kept a few schedules on HF CW with nephew RC Ghormley when he was living in Big Spring, Texas. (He long ago outstripped me in know how in the radio arena.) I also made a few stabs at contacts with Bob Remington in Costa Rica (TI2RO), but not with satisfactory regularity.

During the ’60s and ’70s, as the ham ranks grew, manufacturers turned their attention to this market and started producing transmitter/receiver units — “transceivers” which let you transmit automatically on the same frequency as that to which you were listening. This was a BIG step forward in operating convenience. Unfortunately — that word is a matter of opinion of course — hams became less interested in building their own equipment and more inclined to buy factory-built stuff. This was partly due to the expertise required to construct the increasingly sophisticated equipment.

As the number of hams building their own equipment shrunk (shrank?), the number of places to buy parts also shrinked. Radio Shack became about the only spot selling components. Whatever the reasons, hams were turning into “appliance operators”. The good old “homebrew” days and  “breadboarding” were gone. In the late ’70s I decided I had done my “building”, and succumbed to the appeal of transceiver operation.

In retirement
One of the reasons I took early retirement was to be able to spend more time hamming. When retirement came in 1981 I had more time available for hamming and getting acquainted with the Lincoln hams. I spent some time in “traffic handling” and thoroughly enjoyed it, both on phone and CW. I helped get the Nebraska traffic nets re-energized, even publishing a quarterly “Nebrasskey” sheet for the 25 or so hams active in this endeavor. After a few years the demands of keeping the schedules for traffic operation became bothersome, and I decided I had had enough of “traffic”.

Soon after retirement the lure of computers and “digital” ham modes caught me. I started with that versatile little Commodore C-64 and enjoyed activity on radio teletype, AMTOR, and “packet”. I became reasonably proficient in programming the C-64 in both Basic and Machine Language.

About 1983 I submitted an article to QST dealing with the use of the simple L net to “match” a transmission line to the new solid-state transmitters (which need a “load” of nearly “pure” resistance). Included in the article was an explanation about a set of charts first published several years earlier by a Phillip Smith. Smith was a VERY famous inventor of another set of charts, called the Smith Charts. I had some phone calls and letter contact with Mr. Smith. I was really rubbing elbows with the famous!! Smith died a few years later. QST published the article in their first Antenna Compendium.

With some degree of modesty I do admit to improving on a neat, simple, 2-meter “J-Pole” antenna using 300-ohm ribbon in a half-inch PVC pipe. I saw the original configuration in a packet bulletin board file but made changes to simplify further and reduce the SWR. The ribbon is 60″ long with a 1/4″ gap 13″ up from the end; feed it on the end. Several Lincoln hams adopted it for their own use, calling it the “KK-Special”.

In mid-1992 I got a letter from W6SAI, Bill Orr, (NOT the Nebraska Bill Orr) asking about the Compendium article. W6SAI is a very famous contributor to ham radio publications, so it’s almost like getting a letter from God Himself!!! He and I have exchanged several letters, and I have sent him some BASIC programs related to the article.

My hamming in the late 1980s and into these ’90s is sporadic and mostly confined to helping the Lincoln Amateur Radio Club with public service events. I throw in an occasional CW rag chew just for old times’ sake. It all helps keep me young. Ham Radio has been a very rewarding and fun part of my life.

END of HAM RADIO