[ADXA] SWLing was so fun...

[Daniel Puckett Jr.]

I remember Pappy, too  -  K5 Arkansas Junk Yard.  I used to work him on 40m AM during the day from Searcy.  I took my General Class exam at the Post Office in Little Rock and prepared to get on phone while waiting for the paper license to come in the mail.  A serious lack of funds meant I had to make do with what was at hand.  SSB was still quite new so AM was an acceptable mode.  I had a Sears & Roebuck Silvertone electric guitar amplifier and used that to screen grid modulate an 807.  That was the end of my career as a musician!

During the summer of 1961 I attended summer school at what was then Southern State College in Magnolia.  I soon learned I was not the only ham radio operator enrolled in the program.  Mike Byrd K5YBA, Bob Reynolds K5VOL  and I started scheming about setting up a station.  We located an old WW II barracks building on campus that was mostly empty and that became the ham shack.  My parents were kind enough to bring my ham gear with them when they came down for a visit and we were in business as K5FXB/5!  The station consisted of an 80m dipole, a Knight R-100 receiver and my screen grid modulated Knight T-50.  Mike checked into a lot of  area 75m Phone nets and was the principal operator, but all three of us had a grand time.  No DX with that setup, but great fun!  I still have the logs.

73, Dan K5FXB
________________________________________
From: adxa-bounces at mailman.qth.net [adxa-bounces at mailman.qth.net] on behalf of Dennis Schaefer [dennisw5rz at gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, September 25, 2020 4:39 PM
To: Richard Harris
Cc: adxa
Subject: Re: [ADXA] SWLing was so fun Rick,     after I started hearing hams on the air. Broadcast stations seldom      QSLed.

[cid:F613D4E8-C6A1-4E73-BC27-180FF1F06868-L0-001]

Rick, I’m sure I showed this to you before.   You were a serious “ham-band” SWL at the time with that SX-111.  I also started out as an SWL.  A newspaper man from my first hometown in Hunter, AR, loaned my dad a Hallicrafters receiver of some kind - don’t remember the model.  I was fascinated, so we ordered an S-108 from the Sears and Roebuck catalog.  I did a lot of SWL’ing and used that receiver as WN5IIS in Brinkley along with a Knight T-60 that I assembled.  The receiver didn’t do well on SSB but was usable on CW.  What sparked my interest in ham radio was listening to AM conversations on 80 meters.  I remember Pappy, K5AJY, from Little Rock.

Good days!

Dennis, W5RZ

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