[AMRadio] Otis K5SWK

[Geoff]

On 12/20/2012 07:53 AM, Geoff wrote:
>
>          For those that knew him...
>          Otis Nonken K5SWK.
>          Funeral Services will be at Earthman Resthaven Cemetary
>          13102 North Freeway (I-45)
>          Houston, TX
>          between Greens Rd and Rankin Rd.
>          at 12:30pm, 21 December, 2012.

I was informed about a thread that had been started on "AM Forever".  
There was some mis-information there that I wanted to get straightened 
out which turned into some rather pleasant memories for me.

There's a picture of Otis in the operating position of his single 
833xp-p 833 rig in a few places around the 'net.


Here's what I posted on AM Forever.  I'll put it on AMFone.net as well.



Well, first off, hello everyone.

Let me set some things straight here...

Otis' rig had a single 833, modulated by a pair.  His antenna was a full 
size dipole, stretched high and tight at ~90'.

Otis got off the air at night, because he was tired of the bickering 
from the 3.878 crowd.  Band conditions were noisy at night and frankly, 
his hearing has been declining for decades.  Less noise was better.   
Otis probably did quit operating at night after K5MHZ/Koby went SK 
partly, but mostly it was because of the night time noise on 75m, that 
and the kibbitzing from 3.878.

Otis was on in the morning hours -and- evening hours, and 2 decades or 
so ago, there was a morning group that consisted of the 'old gang', 
inclusive of W5FAO/Noel in Waco, Ken Smith/W5FLV in Bellaire, TX, 
Paul/K5DKM in San Antonio, Mil/K5LKM in Columbus, Alton/W5FAP in San 
Antonio and a few others that would drift in/out, including KA5THB (my 
old call), K5WLT and some others.  All of those other guys now are 
SK'ed.  Ronnie/WLT is still around.

The night-time crew was a lot larger with (then)K5FZ, WA5VGO, K5KZQ, 
WA5BXO, K5LLK, WD5JKO, Sulphur John/WD5EHS, WD5CFJ, W5MEU, N5SJL (now 
K5SPE), K4KYV, WA1HLR, W4CJL, WE5L, and just about any AM'er at the time 
that was able to generate a few watts of modulated RF would get in 
there.  If Bob/PYT was on, Otis would do his best to be there with him, 
but there was lots and lots of work to be done.  Otis and his family 
were busy working on the house they were living in.  It's 90% complete, 
but the family seemed to 'stop' in the late 90's when his teen-aged 
daughter, Lorrie, was killed in a senseless automobile accident.

In later years, the morning crew evolved to K5LTK/Steve, K5WLT/Ronnie, 
N5ECP/Jeff, WA5YBQC/Elray, KC5MIP/Yogie, W5OMR/Me, KA5RHK/Ken, 
K5SPE/Scotty, W5KGZ/Perry, W5DWP/Wayne, AD5HR/Jon, K5SEE/John and 
WA5RNL/Roger.  I'm sure there were more that drifted in/out, but Otis 
was the main-stay.

John/WA5BXO's rig ran a pair of 250TH's modulated by (4) 813's in 
push-pull parallel.  Currently, it's at Perry/W5KGZ's place. Typically, 
in the half-dozen or so times that Otis would get on the air from John's 
operating position, it was me that went from San Antonio to Grangerland 
to pick him up and go get on the air.

For about 5 or 6 years in a row, on the Saturday closest to 7 Feb, we'd 
get about a dozen or so guys together to go celebrate Otis' b'day at the 
Golden Corral in Humble, Tx.  The last time we did that was 2 years go, 
come Feb.

Otis didn't want to get on the air from his shack, because he was afraid 
of the floor caving in.  It hasn't, yet...    Otis' shack was a 
home-brewed building built on a skid, so it could be considered portable 
and therefore not a property 'improvement'', to avoid additional 
property taxes.  Otis' son, Joe, has requested that John and I go out 
there and put that rig on the air.  We want to do that, but would like 
to announce a time/date when it'll be on and of course, the frequency 
will be 3.880Mc.  Otis' rig never crapped out, totally.. I did haul the 
final to John's place, and he put the low voltage to it and found a bad 
bias regulator (OD3 that had probably been in there 40+ years) and we 
took it back out there, fired it up and did some testing.  I told Otis 
'put out a call'.  He said 'Why do that?  We might actually work someone!'
:-)  Always the character.

You know, in that picture, the two pieces of rack stuff were (left to 
right) the modulator and power supply (note: one of the 833's had a 
loose filament connection - it was off in this picture, but you couldn't 
tell it on the air) and the Final, running a single 833.
In front of Otis, below the microphone, was the speech-amp/mixer 
console.  Also included in the console are the transmitter switches for 
spotting, and keying the B+ and killing the RX.
To the right of the Console was the home-brewed exciter. Originally, the 
exciter was to run a single 4-65, but when it came down to it, the 4-65 
he had was bad, so he lashed up a socket that plugged in the 4-65 
socket, and fed the 833 the RF from a pair of 6146's (since they were 
plentiful)
To the right of that, was the hearing aid.  Several different receivers 
have passed through there... an HQ-One-Forty-Five was the main receiver 
for the longest time, but later years, Otis had used an ol' HQ-129x.  
And, of course, the cassette deck recorder/deceiver. ;-)  Many was the 
time that Otis would put a tape of something on, a story from Koby about 
his dog Duke and the 'Cuban Cigar' (dog poop, but to hear Koby tell 
it..hehehe..) or some other recording of maybe a Telephone where he'd 
say "hey, I've got to go... be right back" and use that excuse to go pee 
or get coffee or something...

What a guy.  What a talent.  What an entertainer in the Ham World. What 
a loss for all of us.

73 ol' friend.
-Geoff/W5OMR