[Hallicrafters] BA's at Field Day

[Mike Everette]

A week after the fact, this may be an "old thread" now but interesting, nonetheless.  Another look at the good ol' days....

My first Field Day adventure was 1962.  I just entering high school and I'd had my General about a month after about six months on the Novice bands.  The local club was set up at the county fairgrounds in the cow barn -- it still had a bit of an aura from the most recent livestock auction.  I had developed a reputation as a pretty good CW operator, so was set down in front of a B&W 5100 and Hallicrafters SX-101, to work 80 meters.  Wow!  Heady stuff, for someone who'd earned his wings on a Heathkit DX-40 and Halli SX-96...!  I gladly did 80 CW all night, while behind me someone else had a Central Electronics 100V or 200V, I can't remember which, and a Collins 75A-3 on 40 SSB.  After sunrise, when 80 fell out, I got to work 20 SSB using a Gonset transmitter (can't recall the model) and a Drake 1-A which looked a lot like a rural mailbox but was one of the finest receivers I have ever used, to this day.  During lunch, someone else -- a YL, by golly -- took
 over that spot.  I spent the afternoon on 10 meter AM with a Johnson Ranger and a Halli SX-99, using a barb-wire electric fence (de-energized!) for an antenna, stuck straight into the Ranger with no tuner.  I was working 'em right and left -- except the YL kept giving me dirty looks every time I keyed up, as the 20 meter beam was mounted maybe 25 feet above the electric fence -- until the power was pulled down at 4 pm Sunday afternoon, right in the middle of my last QSO, darn it.

Thinking back on this, I realize there was nary a transceiver in sight.  I also believe this was the last year the club ran any AM gear.

The next year, one guy brought a brand-new Halli SR-150, for which he'd traded a Collins KWM-1 (!!) because the Collins didn't cover 75 and 40.

That first Field Day was awesome; but the most "pure fun" I ever had was several years later when I took an ART-13 transmitter and BC-348 receiver (which was "pure-stock" except for an AC supply) and worked 40 CW all night to the tune of over 400 contacts.

By the way, my National HRO that I took this year and came close to getting  fried by a Banzai charge from a funky generator, is just fine!  The power supply -- actually one for a Navy RAS-5 version rather than a stock HRO supply -- must be bullet proof.  It has been running for five days straight with no signs of trouble.  Hmm, had I taken my Hallicrafters SX-25 instead, as I briefly considered doing, its power transformer probably would've ended up a krispy kritter.

73

Mike
WA4DLF