[Elecraft] Craziest / most rewarding QSOs

[Fred Jensen]

You should have been a teen in the run-up to Cycle 19 in the 50's, 
Wayne.  I can't imagine what a K<anything> could have done.  Our 
prehistoric gear was actually doing amazing things then.  Other than 
Field Day, field operations, SOTA, Parks, IOTA and the like hadn't been 
invented. HF mobile was big, VHF FM and repeaters hadn't been invented 
either.  Unfortunately, I believed "This is just how it will always be."

73, Fred ["Skip"] K6DGW
Sparks NV DM09dn
Washoe County

On 9/13/2018 5:45 PM, Wayne Burdick wrote:
> 15 meters never fails to amaze me.
>
> During a recent bout of paper log archaeology, I rediscovered a QSO I logged as a teen, in 1972. I was just minding my own business, tuning up using a Heath DX-20 driving 3 feet of coax to a 40 W incandescent bulb. Then a guy in Illinois called me....
>
> Some years later I was using a home-brew rig (the “Safari 4”) while visiting my Mom in Arizona. The battery was nearly depleted, the rig putting out only 200 mW. The antenna: 8 feet of wire running directly from the rig through a window to a clothesline. Tuning slowly, I heard a CQ from Rwanda (9X5). I called him and got a “QRZ?” With a *lot* of patience on his end, we completed a basic QSO. No computer, no narrow filtering, no noise blanker.
>
> I would’ve gone nuts for a KX2 back in those days.
>
> 73,
> Wayne
> N6KR
>