[GreenKeys] RTTY Lurker

[Fred Hatfield]

Hi, Guys:

I have been lurking on Greenkeys for a while now. 

I am Fred Hatfield, K8VDU, initially WN5EPA way back in the 1950s when I first
got interested in ham radio and electronics. My favorite pastime as a young
kid was getting old radios from the Salvation Army store and taking them apart.
I eventually got curious about all that wire in the transformers (didn't know what
It was then) and silver paper in the capacitors.

I was curious enough to access the public library and found out what those
Interesting things did. I began to play with the crystal sets that I read about
and soon I had some other kids in school interested, too.  We traded information 
about radio and built homemade radio receivers.

A friend of mine told me about finding some old pinball machines at the city
dump -- and we dragged two of them to his parents garage. I fell in love with
the stepping switches and relays and eventually wired up a tic-tac-toe circuit.

My uncle was a ship's radio operator and a ham, he spotted me as a candidate
for a ham license and talked me into getting a novice ticket, WN5EPA, and I
was on my way to become an EE.

On graduation, I was hired by Western Electric in Chicago to develop electronic
products for the ESS 1 switching system. That's when I met Bob Lerche, an
Engineer and Teletype enthusiast. Don't recall his call letters now, but he got
me into RTTY and those beautiful Greenkeys machines. 

I had originally run across an old CQ or 73 magazine that had an article about
the JUNKEYBOARD --- when RTTY was just a 'gleam in the eye', and keyboards
were not available. It was made from a regular typewriter keyboard with scored
selenium plates under the keys so that when the key was pressed, it contacted
the plate and generated the Baudot character desired. Anybody recall that?

Anyway, I had dreamed of having a tty and my first machine was a model 26 (or
a 28?), I forget the model number.

Through the years I have had a full range of models, even one of my favorites,
the FRXD.  I don't have a machine right now, would love to have one! If there is
anything available around the New Orleans area, I would jump at the chance!

I have been enjoying the discussions here, get a little jealous when I see the
listings of owned machines, but at my age (87), I'm lucky to be around....

Fred K8VDU


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