[Hallicrafters] Novice Tales - Numero Dos

[David Hollander]

I had the misfortune of being a novice in 1964. Why do I say misfortune?
It was the bottom of the sunspot cycle and at that time for you new
hams, the novice license was 12 month and non-renewable. If it expired
after 12 months, you lost your call and would get a new one with the
next license. That happened to me by a month and I had tears in my eyes
when I lost my WN6IWX novice call at age 12. Little did I know that it
was a blessing in disguise because it would not have been a good call
for working DX.

Anyway 1964 was the bottom of the sunspot cycle and 15 meters was
completely dead over the summer months which of course was my summer
vacation. I mean dead
no signals from May until late August.

My plan was to get up every morning at 2 AM and get on 80 meters and
call CQ "east" hoping I might work someone in say Chicago or farther.
After a couple of weeks of doing this and not working anyone further
than Chicago I was quite discouraged until one particular morning. It
was in July 1964. I got up at 2 am, tuned up the HT-40 with a 3725 Kc
crystal and began calling my usual "CQ east". I threw the switch back to
receive and began tuning the SX-115 around the band as we did back than
and about 10 Kc up I heard a weak signal calling me. He must have sent
my call 25 times and finally I heard the "de" and than WN6
and of course
my heart sank. Than I heard "/KM6" and I about jumped out of my chair.
It was WN6KOG/KM6 on Midway Island. My Elmer was  a DXer and I was
interested in DX. I had learned enough from him to know that KM6 was a
DX call. For the newer hams, the prefixes like KA2, KG6, KM6, KP6, KR6
KX6, etc. were assigned to the American Servicemen in Japan, US
possessions  and US territories and were not stateside calls until
around 1977 when they completely messed up the callsign system (just my
opinion :-)). I had about a 15 minute QSO with this guy and of course
was so excited that I wanted to wake my parents and tell them. I kept my
cool as it was the middle of the night. This was my first DX QSO and
really got me interested in DX and especially DXing on 80 meters where I
have 270 countries now. I received his homemade QSL card about a week
later. This is my favorite novice story. I never did succeed in working
east of Chicago on 80 meters as a novice!

I have the original S-41W, a replacement HT-40 transmitter but I don't
have an SX-115 as I don't think they are worth what they are selling for
these days. My Collins 75A-4 does just fine thank you!

Dave N7RK


--
***********************************************************
Dave  N7RK                    http://members.cox.net/n7rk
Phoenix, Arizona         *DXCC Honor Roll*    *WAZ#23 - 75 Meter SSB*

            ex-XE2/N7RK, N7RK/ZB2, VK2ERK, ZM0AJN, WB6NRK, WN6IWX

Boatanchor Collector Extraordinaire preferring Hallicrafters, National
and what ever else looks interesting!