[50mhz] 6m Golden Years

[Bud whitehill]

There is some truth in Mike's (AB5L) cast of characters during 6m's
"Golden Years", but he's got the order, & preponderence, wrong.  There
weren't that many ex-5m men active, tho I knew a few. (also, I never knew
anyone running an amp in push-push; that was a freq-doubler circuit and
it was hard to find anyone using it as that. Maybe you meant push-pull.)
The CD guys were mostly techs, comparable to today's RACES & OEM
participants, and were not that plentiful. This was the era of the cold
war and kids were being told to hide under their desks so as to avoid
getting evaporated by an atomic bomb, while their parents were building
bomb shelters in the basement. The largest single group active on 6m were
the techs. The rest of hamdom wanted no part of a band that opened every
9 years and got into every electronic device consumers owned (lotsa war
stories there).  And it wasn't magic at all, just plain fun.

Two events contributed to the maturing of the 6m band. The first was the
decision of the FCC to implement the Technician license. That
jump-started activity on 6m which, in turn, provided incentive to
manufacturers to produce 6m gear (prior to that, you built!), first AM
stuff, then SSB. Little by little more HF guys got interested.

The second, much later, ocurred when the UK started licensing G's for 6m
operation;  that opened the door for all of Europe; now 6m was an
international DX band and subsequently the first 6m DXCC certificate was
issued. Without these events, we wouldn't have the gear nor the operators
we have now.

Oh yeah, Mike's posting made me dig out the literature re my old
Techcraft converter I used; the gear was made a couple of miles from me,
in River Edge, NJ

73 de Bud K2YOF
Secy WN2NUW Teaneck ARC





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