GB> Re: [QRP-L] RE: [CW] Slightly OT: 60 Years Ago Today

[N2EY at aol.com]

In a message dated 8/8/07 7:31:56 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
rohre at arlut.utexas.edu writes:


> Jim, Good points, I should have phrased it as 10m was newly reopened after 
> the war, (as were the lower bands).
>  
> I believe the bands were not all opened at once, at least in Europe, I read 
> somewhere.
>  

In the USA too. The various armies and navies took a while to change over to 
a postwar mode of operating. 

10 meters was the first HF band hams got back in the USA.

It took several decades to get all of 160 meters back.

> Yes, the antennas would have been limiting factor on bands lower than 20m.  
> I just looked at the Kon Tiki Museum site, and most of his rafts were small. 
>  
> 

Mighty small when you consider the size of the Pacific...

> And of course there were no WARC bands as we have today. 

They were more than 3 decades in the future!

 Of course, expeditions sometimes get allocations belonging to one country of 

> origin that might not be allocated in all.  (US historically has had wider 
> 40m and 20m band than much of the British Commonwealth nations).
> 

I think you mean 80 and 40 meters. It was a regional compromise - Region 2 
(basically the Americas) had 3.5 to 4.0 and 7.0 to 7.3, while Region 1 (Europe 
and Africa) had only 3.5 to 3.8 and 7.0 to 7.1.

> 
> As late as 1957, a very popular rig among my Elmers was the Johnson Ranger 
> transmitter, which had a whopping 65 watts input power.  Many of us started 
> with 50 watt Heath DX 20's or similar from Knight Kit, Johnson, or others, or 
> even lower power transmitters such as the WRL Labs CW transmitter, and kits 
> from Walter Ashe Radio in St. Louis, Ameco, and others.

My first transmitter was a single 6V6GT running 10 watts input. My first 
nonhomebrew tx was a DX-20. 1967
> 
> 1957 was a peak sunspot year; 1946 and 47 had to be pretty good sunspot 
> years as well.
> 

Good but not as good as the late 1950s, which was the best sunspot cycle 
every recorded.

73 de Jim, N2EY

 


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