[Elecraft] Another dumb one- Sunspot cycle

[dlajr at bellsouth.net]

In 1957, I was ten years old, and I built my first kit (with the help of my father).  It was a Space Spanner.  I received transmissions of all sorts, and several modes, from all over the world using a wire out my bedroom window that ran to an insulator I had nailed into the eave of an outbuilding.  It was magic, and it started me on a journey that I am still travelling today.  My father became so enthused that he became licensed in 1958, and helped me to get licensed in 1959.

Then, as now, I lived in Greer, South Carolina.  Nobody alive in the south at that time had ever seen an aurora.  I can remember in the fall of 1957, and the winter of 1957-1958, the sky would glow a pinkish-orange almost every night.  It looked as though we were living inside of a neon tube!  Some nights it was bright enough to read by. People were running crazy in the streets saying that the world was coming to an end.

Even in 1959, the cycle was so potent that I would come home from school and work the U.S. on 80 meters with a one watt tube transmitter that I had ordered from the back of a magazine.

If there is such a thing as sun spot cycle nostalgia, 1957 would get my vote!

Dan Allen
KB4ZVM
K2 S/N 1757
  
> 
> From: "Stuart Rohre" <rohre at arlut.utexas.edu>
> Date: 2004/07/19 Mon PM 04:58:22 EDT
> To: "Mike Morrow" <kk5f at earthlink.net>,  <elecraft at mailman.qth.net>
> Subject: Re: [Elecraft] Another dumb one- Sunspot cycle
> 
>