[Elecraft] Solar Cycle

[Tony Estep]

On Fri, Jul 22, 2016 at 8:22 PM, Bill W4ZV <btippett at alum.mit.edu> wrote:

> The peak was actually late December 1957 (Solar Flux = 375 and sunspots =
> 355).
> I was very lucky to be QRV then and made the first Novice DXCC:
> http://www.novice.bappy.com/about_21.html
>
============
Yep, those were legendary days. I too made Novice DXCC, shortly after Bill.
He was KN4RID in those days. I worked my 100th right after he got his, but
I stuck my cards in a drawer and didn't send them in for over a decade.
Finally I dug 'em out and got my DXCC certificate, issued under my novice
call, KN0LTB. It's still up on the wall.There was one other novice who did
it, but I can't remember who it was. The bands were open practically 24
hours and 15 meter CW, which was where you had to be as a novice, was
hopping all the time. You could hear scientists from all over using calls
ending in -IGY, standing for international geophysical year. They traveled
to far-flung places to take readings on propagation, weather patterns,
aurora, and anything else they expected to be affected by the record levels
of solar activity. Those were the days of phone patches (no Skype), and 15
phone had a constant flow of patched conversations from scientist phoning
back to the home folks. Even in those days there was SSB activity, mostly
coming from 10 watt phasing exciters. Other popular rigs included the
Viking Ranger and the Heath DX-100. The tube of the day was the 6146. The
older hams who mentored me had home-brew rack-mounted monstrosities,
plug-in coils, something like a pair of 250TH tubes modulated by another
pair of 250THs, power transformer as big as a wastebasket.

73,
Tony KT0NY

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