[Hammarlund] OT: Nostalgia: Question on Tommy Rockford Ham Radio books

Tue Aug 22 14:54:21 EDT 2006

At 05:14 PM 8/22/2006 +0000, you wrote:
>I am REALLY enjoying this topic.  I am a new ham (licensed last year) and 
>never knew there was a series of books with ham radio playing a leading 
>role!  My son is 4 and I would love for him to be able to read this stuff 
>when he gets older.  Can one find these books? I would be interested in 
>the original ones if they have since been rewritten with modern gear. I 
>can't see being excited to read about tommy rockford turning on his 
>756-PRO or whatever its called.
>
>Can someone help me with a name of the series? Perhaps a search on ebay or 
>abebooks might help me locate these.

Abebooks had the revised version of SOS at Midnight. c 1985 ARRL

I would google "Walker A. Tompkins"  "SOS at Midnight" and "Ghost Ships." I
think there were others. The original was copyright 1957. Some used book
stores list them but many have the 1980's revisions (republished by the ARRL
but no longer available from them.) Some have called these the "K6ATX"
series. I believe K6ATX himself is a Silent Key, I thought I read that several
years back in QST. (He was born in 1910 so statistics are not in his favor.)
The revisions (not clear how many there were) updated the gear from
what I have been told (I think I only read the original 1957 SOS at
Midnight.) Since the revisions were in the mid-1980's, I doubt that there
are any 756-PROs listed. Since the protagonist of the novels and I are about
the same age (I'm now 64, licensed 51 years) we really had to have some 
understanding
of how our gear actually worked. There were virtually no transceivers 
except maybe
the Gonset "Gooney Bird" for 2 meters. We manipulated separate receivers and
transmitters and you usually had to design your own solution to switch from
Xmit to Rcv.  Many of us who were kids could really only afford some of the
cheaper kit transmitters. By 1956, not too many of us were building our rigs
from scratch as our mentors had. I bought much of my gear used (cheaper than
kits) and then employed every modification we could find in the magazines.

Some of the pricing for the original editions reflect a minor collector's
price ($25-$50) but  the prices seem all over the map. I would enlist a used
book store in the search. I think the original was in hardback. They are
probably quite scarce as I seem to remember that the originals were "vanity"
published, e.g. not by a major publisher and probably available only through
mail order from the author. The reprints was available through ARRL but
again they really have only their own distribution channels in the ham
community and have virtually no penetration with the major Booksellers. Of
course, in 1957 there were really no major bookselling chains a la Borders
and BN. If you just wish to read them, you might be able to get them through
an interlibrary loan, which sometimes will go all the way to the Library of
Congress to get books. Any book with a copyright will usually be in the LOC.
I've gotten some really obscure stuff there (but not these.)

I don't think I read the subsequent books as I was in college by the time
they came out. They might have been more entertaining than some of the
stuff I had to read there :-)

Jon Teske, W3JT

>thanks again!
>Eugene
>
>
>
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: Jon Teske [mailto:jdteske at comcast.net]
> >Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2006 12:04 PM
> >To: 'Paul', Hammarlund at mailman.qth.net
> >Subject: Re: [Hammarlund] OT: Nostalgia: Question on Tommy Rockford Ham 
> Radio books
> >
> >I don't have the series as I read at least the first one (SOS at Midnight)
> >from a library copy. I was an exact contemporary of the protagonist, Tommy
> >Rockford (I graduated from high school in 1960 and was licensed as an 8th
> >grader in Jan '56) I remember thinking that the equipment listed was pretty
> >accurate and indicative of what someone would use at the time although my
> >ham friends and I were a bit envious of some of the equipment he used and
> >thought that "California Kilowatts" were something more than just legends.
> >My teen ham buddies of the era grew up in the "rust belt" of a Wisconsin
> >factory town and our equipment was much more modest. I had a Heath AT-1 and
> >a Hallicrafters S-38D which was hardly an adequate ham receiver, later as a
> >General Class, I got an Adventurer and an HQ-100) Needless to say, I became
> >proficient at CW (and still am.)
> >
> >What I liked about the one book I know I read was that the protagonist was
> >"cool" and did have a girlfriend who I believe became a ham as well. I 
> liked
> >the idea of a "cool" hero because there was a perception that the teen hams
> >in our town were "geeky." I was anything but a geek, but we had an image
> >problem to overcome as one of the more visible teen hams in our town was an
> >archtypical "geek" right down to the plastic pocket protectors and
> >eyeglasses mended with tape in the center. Try as I might though, I never
> >persuaded any girls in my classes to take up radio. Girls just didn't do
> >that very often then. I totally failed with my girlfriend of the era who
> >ultimately became my wife (and still is). She just didn't get it, still
> >doesn't. Her baby sister though (10 years younger) also married a ham, also
> >her teen boyfriend, and did become one herself.
> >
> >Despite the accuracy of the ham radio matters in the book, I do remember a
> >few howlers. The protagonist was a scholastic overachiever as were many 
> teen
> >hams, but when the book said that Tommy Rockford was taking fourth year
> >Physics in Highs School we realized that the author hadn't been in a school
> >recently. There was probably not a high school in the country back then
> >which offer any more than one year of Physics. The courses Tommy took
> >were more akin to graduate school at CalTech :-) The norm was that student
> >were usually required to take one year of General Science as a Freshman,
> >Biology (which included some subject now taught in Health) in 10th grade 
> and
> >that Chemistry and Physics were electives for the last two years, mostly 
> for
> >the college bound. My school only sent about 15% of its grads to college. I
> >probably would not have gone had it not been for ham radio even though my
> >college majors were a long way away from radio subjects (English and
> >French). I did end up working in intelligence for the Gov't and my radio
> >knowledge became a very important part of my career.
> >
> >It would indeed be interesting for those of us at that age to reread these
> >books unrevised as they came out in the late 50's. I think most of the kids
> >who read the book in my town borrowed it from the library where I worked 
> (it
> >was purchased at my suggestion to the head librarian.) Most of them were
> >the teen hams although I do remember suggesting the book to a few of my
> >(guy) friends because it was an easy read and relatively easy to crank 
> out a
> >required book report for an English class. In today's environment of AP
> >classes you would never get away with reviewing a book like that but I
> >probably handed it into at least three different English teachers (my mom
> >raised no dummy!.) A couple of my friends from that era did become hams 
> much
> >later in adult life and I wonder if their exposure to the subject may have
> >come from this book or by chumming around with me although I didn't live,
> >eat, sleep ham radio by the time I was in high school.
> >
> >
> >Jon Teske W3JT, Olney, MD (I was K9CAH as a kid in Wisconsin.)
> >
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