[Hallicrafters] Why I'm a Hallicrafters Guy

[MICHAEL PLAZIAK]

This is one of the best threads I've read in a while.  My first exposure to ham radio was seeing my best friend's father operate cw from a HT-44/SX-117 pair back in 1975 when I was 12 years old. I'll always remember the occasion.  My friend and I had come in from the cold one winter afternoon in northern Maine to warm up by the fireplace.  My friend's dad (Bruce Burnham WA1VHZ) had converted a closet next to the fireplace in the den into a ham shack.  Bruce was sitting in his den, fireplace roaring, cw pounding through the PS-125-150 speaker while he smoked a bowl of Captain Black from a corn cob pipe. "What is that?" I asked.  "Oh, that's my dad's ham radio" my friend replied. I watched in amazement as the signal meter on the SX-117 fluttered up and down to the sound of morse code. The lights on the rig gave off a warm glow to the closet-shack while the light of the fireplace danced off the nautical charts on the walls.  Bruce was quiet as he sat and copied code while occasionally emanating a puff from his pipe. A number of QSL cards from various locales hung behind his head on the closet door. I asked Bruce who he was talking to and he replied intermittently during the QSO that the other ham was "down state".  From that point on I was intrigued by the idea of being able to communicate with someone hundreds of miles away without a phone line. I was hooked.   

My dad bought me a Hallicrafters S-204 shortwave receiver the following Christmas as a test to see if I really was interested in ham radio.  I listened to Radio Moscow, the Vatican and other DX from that shortwave radio.  But it wasn't enough and only fueled my desire to go beyond being a spectator and get my ticket.  Bruce became my Elmer. I passed my novice ticket in the spring of 1977 and during that fall I picked enough potatoes on the local farm to buy a Realistic DX-160 receiver (at 45 cents a barrel I wasn't going to make enough to buy a brand new transceiver).  I borrowed a an ARC-5 transmitter from Bruce and got on 80 meters cw.   After 25 years of episodic hamming interrupted by college, several tours of duty in the Marines, and a family, I finally bought an HT-44/SX-117 pair to rekindle that spark that came to me in the winter of 75. I sent Bruce an email shortly after buying them to let him know how he and his rigs inspired me many years ago.  Today, I enjoy the HT-44/SX-117 rigs more so now than I do using any of my solid state rigs. It's the "warm glow" effect.  Now, if I can get my XYL to let me light my pipe....
73s
Mike Plaziak
KO6CR
(ex WB1DHF)