[Elecraft] Technology Change

Mon Sep 26 15:54:06 EDT 2016

Thank you everyone for the kind words that have been sent to me via email.
Im 62 yrs old and still love radio as much as when the magic of the fist
xtal set that I put together.

It is still magic that I can close a switch and broadcast RF and
instantaneously some one 5 to 7000 miles away hears me and sends my call
back to me. When ever I do this it is a connection to the world, to another
person making the magic happen. Over and Over it is like xmas when some one
answers my CQ or when I answer someone else.

Some of my best times was when I just sit back and listen to 2 or 3 guys in
a round table talk on CW. I really enjoy just listening. I can hold my own
on CW and copy most of the time in my head and keep notes of name qth, job
and kids etc on paper. People are life and most of the qso's beyond
equipment and signal report are great. I use an amp to make this happen
longer to keep the window of propagation up 30 min to an hour longer,
knowing that I may never hear this person again. Now that I use N3FJP ACLOG
for logging, I realize I have talked to many people and can pick up where I
have left off with them.

So. My best advice is use an electronic logger and keep notes in the log.
It will make so much better communication. My brain is good but I cant
remember everything. Remembering in the log and coming back gives the other
operator validation that someone cared enough to take the time and give
value to their time from the last QSO. Take this time and be more than an
operator, be a caring person that is interested in more than just
contesting and making the numbers. There is a time and place for the
numbers but in the off times, relaxing, keep a long and you might be
surprised how wonderful this is when someone comes back with your name when
you call CQ.

Hi morgan! always suprises me.

Dale Carnegie, once said, "the most beautiful word in the language is the
sound of your own name especially when some one else remembers and
addresses you." Logging can help with this. After all, there are a few
million of us out there looking for the magic.

Vy 73,

Morgan Bailey NJ8M

On Sat, Sep 24, 2016 at 3:15 AM, Roger Stein <burch.craft at gmail.com> wrote:

> Great read Morgan! Thank you for taking the time to record your historical
> experience.
> 73, Roger K7SJ/VE1 Halifax NS
> First crystal set in the late 50's
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> > On Sep 23, 2016, at 10:47 AM, Morgan Bailey <mbaileycrna at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > I made a miss key, GiGo (for all you fortran non porgramers that means
> > Garbage in Garbage out), 1625 not 1628....arggg..then there was the
> trusty
> > OA3 regular of purple phase noise generator of a mercury vapor
> tube...then
> > there was the magic EYE of the ARK 5 command transmitter...with the flip
> up
> > top with the mirror on it...man those were the days when a BA/Weller 30
> > watt iron a few old TV and Radio sets could get you on the air with
> about 1
> > pound of solder. What great fun that was...when you could actually take a
> > TV apart for the terminal strips and drill out the rivets on the tube
> > sockets, bend an aluminum cookie sheet or use oak lath on 1 by 2s for the
> > tube base chassis open high voltage on the cathode key and static
> generated
> > clix that could be heard on any radio in the house...Bring on the
> resistor
> > across the key and cut down the clix...yeah we have come a long way. Not
> to
> > mention the 2ft by 4ft dupe sheet for Multi-single contesting for each
> > band. Making ladder line because you could not afford the nice round coax
> > when you were 12 years old...it cost more than the entire radio rx and
> tx.
> > using fence wire with oak lath strips cut and drilled then boiled in wax
> to
> > weather proof, the out put of the tube would load just about any thing.
> > Just put a light bulb across the antenna terminals and tune for maximum
> > smoke, with the antenna hooked up...or use a neon light close to the feed
> > line and do the same when you could afford to buy a ne2 light bulb.
> Finding
> > one on the farm was hard. Had to get a ride 70 miles away to a Laffyette
> > radio store to buy one. OMG found a Wave meter there, used it to tune
> after
> > that ...was over driven so connected a resistor to the antenna of the
> meter
> > to bring it in range. Worked DXCC with one 1625 and cw  a dipole fed with
> > ladder line and coils wound on toilet roll cardboard soaked in waterglass
> > then varnished to make them really stiff. All this was before PVC at a
> big
> > box store. They took down the wire from the telephone poles...yes
> telephone
> > wire was like 10 gage copperweld wire...got it free for the taking ...
> had
> > to use a barbed wire fence tool to work with it but once you had it cut
> it
> > stayed up like forever, the tree would come down first...
> >
> > I could rattle for hours on the things I did when I was a kid learning
> > radio, My first radio was out of a used cubscout book I found at a
> library,
> > (I was not a scout), that taught me to make (condenser) a capacitor a
> razor
> > blade (blue blade) detector with a safety pin and a piece of lead from a
> #2
> > pencil. I had to get the wire from an audio transformer to wind the coil
> > and used a #10 gauge copper wire for the slider to tune the coil (fixed
> > capacitor tank, tunable inductor). Then there was the problem of the
> > antenna...clipped it on every thing that I could...then finally clipped
> it
> > on my open bed springs that I slept on and left the radio on the bed side
> > table. KOMA Oklahoma city with no batteries all night long...then KNCK
> > radio Concordia Kansas during the day. Those are where I got my start.
> >
> > My dad was talking to a shop mechanic, W0PBX, Cliff Horne,  that repaired
> > tractors and mentioned my exploits in radio when I was 7 years old and he
> > gave me a key. An old Lionell key. Yeh the same people that made the
> model
> > trains post WWII, it was great, A J38. I tapped on it but could not learn
> > code. LOL needed and oscillator and found that by tuning a radio to an AM
> > station tone using bfo (Beat Frequency Oscillatory, injected a tone so
> you
> > could hear a carrier on an am signal) and keying the speaker yeah the
> > speaker...back then they were dynamic and had an electromagnet for the
> > field core (250 volts on the key) well I had me a damned fine and LOUD
> code
> > practice oscillator...LOL. Oh what fun that was. Oh but I forgot my first
> > real commercial receiver...the trusty BC454, with one touch of the top of
> > the case you wire 20 KHz off freq. Then I upgraded to the BC348. I bought
> > it from a salvage yard again for $3.49 for shipping. I just paid the
> > shipping because I knew the guy. He sent it with out the tubes but I had
> > plenty of old tubes. Back then minimum wage was 60 cents an hour.
> >
> > That rx was like magic with the xtal filter that you could actually
> narrow
> > bandwidth. Otherwise just pushing on the case really hard would make the
> > tones sound like an electric guitar foot pedal. I used that rx because I
> > bought it from a salvage yard. No tubes, and it was wired to be used
> with a
> > dynamotor at 24 volts. Had to rewire all the tubes filaments in parallel
> > from the series that they were wired in and this was explained in a book
> > with a green cover put out by CQ publishing about surplus equip and how
> to
> > put it on the air. Then the trusty Command Transmitter was single band
> but
> > 40 was great back then. Had to use the back socket to put in my xtals
> > because then I was a novice and rockbound at the age of 12-13. Then my
> > first pink slip was when I up graded to a 6146 Eico 720 transmitter and
> SX
> > 101 Hallicrafters RX. Seems like I was on 40 putting out now a raging 60
> > watts and second and third harmonics on 14 and 21 came in to the FCC
> > monitoring station in Nebraska. Oh I was scared. So scared that I sold
> the
> > radio and bought a Gonset G76 transceiver and had great fun then.
> Finally,
> > Loaded hay all summer and bought a Swan Cygnet 270 B and had to manually
> > switch from Transmit to RX when running CW nets for NTS. Was a NCS for
> QKS
> > and TCC  for CAN EAN liason at 14. Got into girls about then and a job
> and
> > did not do anything after I got my general for about 18 years was QRT.
> > College, Family, Wife and finally went to Michigan and got in with a
> bunch
> > of great hams there...AC8W and the late Duck Duck...AKA K8DD Hank. And of
> > course Roy NT8V. Discovered electronic memory keyers then from the AEA
> > company. CK1 and the morsematic. Still have both. They work great. But,
> > Switch to the K1EL usb keyer for computer interface. Nothing better and
> > easier than that. Well again took some time off from radio when I moved
> > back to Topeka Ks. I put up 3 towers and had 3 beams with 40-10 covered
> > with GAIN. Oh what a blast I had. Jobs changed and life changes with the
> > need for income...QRT again and on the road. 16 years QRT this time. All
> > radios and towers and beams sold. Sold the house and bought the fixer up
> > retirement home all one floor for my last house then started  working all
> > over the US as a contract relief anesthetist. Went to a hamfest and
> bought
> > an Elecraft K1 that some one put together. I bought it for RX only to
> > listen to cw...missed it greatly. Best RX I had ever owned. What a
> miracle
> > in a small box. Was totally amazed. Bought it for 140$$ and it was the 4
> > band model. I was amazed. Well one Saturday in the cold winter in North
> > Dakota where I was working, I was severely bored and turned on the radio
> > and what would you believe was the SS weekend. Loved contesting, but
> with 3
> > watts and no antenna worth squat....well I found some old wire in the
> trash
> > and hooked about 15 feet of it up across the room and clipped it to the
> > drape of the hotel room on the ground floor and called the stations that
> > were loudest. I had to get on the net to see how to turn on the Automatic
> > antenna tuner, did this, and bingo 3.5 watts out on 40 and 20 meters. In
> > the next 10 hours I worked over 60 contacts with this set up. If any one
> > would have said it was possible...I would have thought them a bold faced
> > liar. Well I was convinced. QRP works!!!. Especially with the K1. The
> funny
> > part was that I was on the ground floor on the inside concourse of a
> brick
> > hotel shaped in a U. Was totally amazed. Desided to get back on the air
> > more often.
> >
> > My son bought a K3 and still I had no radio or antenna at home, but I
> > bought an electric crank up tower...have to get the priorities straight.
> No
> > radio but, I gots a tower. LOL. Well Tower is still horizontal but I run
> a
> > vertical to a K3S and KTA500 with a Tokyo Hypower amp KFX 1.5. N1MM for
> > logging to an I5 computer with SSHD and they work great. Working on
> getting
> > a better antenna set up but will address that when the house is paid off
> > and retired...26 months for the house then the aluminum seeds will be
> > planted in the back yard. New beams are in the box and phasing array is
> > used for FD. DX engineering NCC1 and active antennas for RX. It works
> well.
> > Now another 4 years of work and I will be able to play radio ... heck
> maybe
> > SO2R and a bit of paper chasing from my city lot antenna farm.
> >
> > Sorry to rattle but I wanted to show the evolution of the radio and tech
> > for me. I failed to mention all the radios in between the ones mentioned
> > but the evolution of radio for me is something that has been great and in
> > the least keeps the Alzheimer's at bay.
> >
> > Vy 73,
> >
> > Morgan Bailey NJ8M
> >
> > On Fri, Sep 23, 2016 at 7:42 AM, Morgan Bailey <mbaileycrna at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> Whats this 6146 stuff...what happened to the 1628 or the 807...and not
> to
> >> mention the trusty 813 and for the big power ...304TL...whoot bring on
> them
> >> big filament transformers...
> >>
> >> On Thu, Sep 22, 2016 at 10:45 PM, Jim Brown <jim at audiosystemsgroup.com>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >>>> On Thu,9/22/2016 8:24 PM, Dauer, Edward wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> Two thoughts on this . . .
> >>>
> >>> Great observations, Ted! And one more thought, articulated in a novel
> by
> >>> Thomas Wolfe, published in 1940. The title is "You Can't Go Home
> Again."
> >>> The meaning of the title is that we can't go back to where we grew up
> (or
> >>> where we had "a life") and expect it to be the same, because things
> change
> >>> in many ways. People we knew then have moved on, they have
> >>> grown/changed/evolved, the things that made up the life of that place
> and
> >>> of those people are different, often VERY different. So we can go back
> to
> >>> the same physical place, but we can't go back to the life we
> remembered.
> >>> And it's not that our memory is faulty, but rather that the world has
> moved
> >>> on.
> >>>
> >>> 73, Jim K9YC
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> ______________________________________________________________
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