[NLRS] "Minnesota Six Meter Phone Net"

[Richard Clem]

I'm wondering if there are any old timers who remember this net.  I was
familiar with it from the late 1970's, in the waning days of 6 meter AM. 
Sixers and Gonset Communicators were a dime a dozen, and a high school student
like me could afford to own a few.

AM was in its last days, and about the only thing I could use it for was to
check in to the Minnesota Six Meter Phone Net, which met every night at 10:30
PM, unless Johnny Carson had a particularly good monologue, in which case the
net started a few minutes late.  It was on 50.4 MHz, although the net control
had to tune up to 50.415 to find me, since that's where my crystal was,
despite what it had printed on it.  A gimmick capacitor got me a few kc's
closer, but I still wasn't in the passband of his Swan.  (But 15 kHz was
plenty close with the Sixer's receiver.)

The Net Control was Len, WA0BFM, with the phonetics Boy From Minnesota.  (It
took me a while to figure out that they were actually phonetics--I thought he
was just announcing that he was a boy from Minnesota.)  As he swung the beam
around, he usually got a half dozen check-ins from the diehard AM'ers, most of
whom had sideband rigs anyway.  One guy always checked in with SSB, but most
of them were AM.  Len also happened to be the third floor janitor at
Minneapolis Edison High School, where I was a student.

I don't remember any of the other calls that checked in to that net, but I
wonder if any of them are still around the VHF world.

73,
Rick W0IS