[CW] Thank you, Zenith Radio Corporation

Thu Nov 14 23:08:16 EST 2013

Hans ....a great story ......  

We too had our start by an old Zenith floor radio with a short wave band and a 78 RPM record player which would also cut records ...  cardboard blanks with a coat of hard varnish on the surface ...  it was about 1940 and I was 8 years old ... 
I can remember during WWII hearing a station broadcasting in German ...  we thought it was Hitler ... 

We did not get interested in ham radio until about 1955 when I found an article about ham radio in either a Popular Science 
or Popular Mechanics magazine .... it even had the CW code listed for the alphabet and numbers ... some how we acquired 
a study booklet for the Novice exam ...  I studied the code and practiced by looking a road signs and making the CW 
sounds in my head ...  I did not know any hams at that time ... I did find one at work and he gave me the Novice test which we 
passed ...  We acquired an Eldico transmitter( single 1625)and a couple of crystals and a Hallicrafters SX-99 at one of the radio stores on Washington St. in Boston ...   we strung a wire out to a tree in the back yard at my parents home and the first station we worked on 80 CW was in Putnam CT !!   Wow all the way to CT !! Later we worked across the pond ... G5LP on 15 CW !! 
We could not believe it when he came back to my CQ ... we still have his card ... and since have worked his son who 
picked up his father's call after he passed away ....Lionel his father was a CW intercept operator during WWII... 

We were drafted into the US Army in Jan 1956 ... and after Basic training at Ft Dix NJ I went to the intermediate speed radio 
operators school on the base for 12 weeks ..   we passed the 18 WPM requirement in about 3 weeks ..  and from then on 
on ran the CW training tapes for the students ...  after graduating we were assigned to the Washington Baltimore Air 
Defense Center at Ft Meade MD and never touched a key ... we ran the long range air defense radar (280 miles) for the 
Wash - Balt Air Defense Center .... for being a draftee it was a very interesting job  to have in the US Army ...   
...and just think this all started because of an old Zenith radio .... 

We did some CW ham operating while I was in the barracks at Ft Meade ... built a single tube 50L6 CW TX ( April 1956 CQ magazine) and an Ocean Hopper regen RX kit from Allied Radio ... 40 CW ...   We built another 50L6 a few years ago and 
do use it on SKN ...  we have a video of it on YOUTUBE ...The Mighty 4 Watter ...No DX but we did work most of the east coast.  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CU81Vh379i4 

Through this marvelous hobby we have gained many friends over the years ...  there is nothing quite like it ...  

We will have 60 years on the bands in 2015 .... 

....and have met two of Marconi's daughters ... Gioia and Elettra ....    what ham could ask for more .....  

and think that all this was started by an old Zenith radio .... 

Whitey  K1VV 
----- Original Message -----

From: "Radio K0HB" <kzerohb at gmail.com> 
To: "CQ-Contest" <cq-contest at contesting.com>, "CW Reflector" <cw at mailman.qth.net> 
Sent: Thursday, November 14, 2013 1:48:54 PM 
Subject: [CW] Thank you, Zenith Radio Corporation 

On the "Arizona Outlaws" contest club reflector, there has been a recent 
exchange of "how I got started in radio" posts. 

Because I take a little ribbing from time-to-time about my "boy and his 
radio" tagline, I thought I'd share the roots of it here too. 

See below. 
--------------------------------- 

I've spent the bulk of my adult life involved in things which can generally 
be termed “technology”, and for fifty-odd years I’ve played in a "geeky" 
hobby called ham radio. 

Growing up in the 1940's and 1950s on a small Midwest farm not even blessed 
with electric lights or a telephone (let alone a refrigerator or a 
television set ) does not seem a likely incubator for a lifelong vocation 
and avocation in Navy communications, ham radio, and telecommunications 
product design.  So how did that transpire? 

It was all the result of a stew made up of a mix of adolescent boredom, 
curiosity, the romance of "far away places", and an old six-volt Zenith 
radio. 

In our “front room” (“living rooms” were for town people) on a convenient 
table next to Dad’s chair stood a large Zenith radio set .  Everything on a 
farm serves some purpose, and this set served to provide the daily 5PM news 
and weather report from WDAY in Fargo.  It wasn’t used a lot for 
"entertainment", with the exception of the Thursday evening weekly episode 
of "Dragnet" to which Dad was addicted.  Beyond that, the radio stood idle. 

Now besides the usual AM broadcast band, the old Zenith had 3 or 4 
additional "short wave" bands.  Despite a long wire antenna which stretched 
from the house to the top of the hay barn, those short wave bands were the 
home mostly of static and very weak foreign sounding stations. 

With one exception.  On dark quiet winter evenings the "4-6 Megacycle" 
shortwave band would sometimes contain a lot of squeaky/squawky Morse code 
signals.  I knew that our mail carrier was something called a “ham radioman” 
so I asked him about those signals.  He said on that band that they were 
probably messages being sent back and forth from ships at sea. 

To a preteen kid on an isolated farm in the middle of the great plains, he 
might as well have told me that they were messages between Venus and Mars! 
I was determined to learn Morse so that I could eavesdrop on the secrets 
that they were exchanging. 

I set out then and there to learn Morse from a chart that I found in "Boys 
Life". 

Turns out that those "secret messages" were mostly about mundane things like 
position reports, weather reports, and expected arrival times, but thus 
began my love of the magic of radio. 

73, de Hans, K0HB 
-- 
"Just a boy and his radio"™ 
-- 

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