[Elecraft] [KX3] Camping radio ops: then and now

[Alan]

Other than Field Day, my first true portable operation was one summer 
around 1970 when I spent summer vacation working as a waiter in a Swiss 
hotel.  I got a callsign (HB9XVK if I remember right) and took along an 
all-homebrew CW station.  The receiver was a transistorized direct 
conversion type and the transmitter was an "AC-DC" type:  it ran 
directly off 120VAC with no transformer.  The tube filaments were wired 
in series (I think the lineup was two 50C5s and a 12AU7 or something 
like that) and the high voltage was rectified directly from the AC line. 
  Of course I had to use an autotransformer to make it work with 
European 240VAC.

Then the hotel put me in a basement room where the window looked out 
onto a patio, so I wasn't able to put up a decent antenna.  I think I 
only made two or three contacts.

Alan N1AL


On 10/04/2016 09:36 AM, Wayne Burdick n6kr at elecraft.com [KX3] wrote:
> My first attempt to operate from a campsite was in 1972, when I was
> 14.