[Qcwa] Early Visual Ham Radio

[J. Craswell]

We also enjoyed playing around with Western Fax Machines.  We picked up a
pile of these at a Mpls Junk store called Acme Electronics.  After a
conversion to make Black turn into Black rather than reverse we were on the
air.  WD0DAN found a mountain of Fax paper and we were burning messages back
and forth.  K0YJE was pretty good with the hand drawn Cartoons and lampooned
me as "Ol' Lightning Mouth"  Normally showing an even more overweight
version of me operating portable from underwater or other likely places such
as the Moon.  We got it into our heads that FAX was only allowed on 220MHz
or up so we got on that band when there were not any (At least that I
remember) Repeaters.  We operated 223.5 MHz and opened up out little group
of the Volcano Repeater Society.  *The joke was that we were going to be VHF
Pioneers and have a 220 MHz repeater delivered from KH6 with a suitable
Volcano for the repeater site.  Daily reports of where it was *Normally
stuck under an overpass were the laugh of the day.  It never arrived.
Anyhow we would listen for FAX checkins by prefixes.  In reverse order so
ZLs' checking in from New Zealand (on 220MHz) were patiently waited on and
we went down the list.  We made our Own antennas (What else could you do?)
One of my creations wouldn't work no matter what I did.  I had a friend
watching the Signal Strength in the shack while we yelled back and forth
where it was "good."  No place that I could find was good and since there
was a major blizzard going on I tried to throw the mess off the side of the
house.  It stuck upside down at a 45 degree angle in a pine tree and up from
the pipe in the roof came the words "Don't move it.  That's perfect!"  We
had  a local Genius W0LMN who tried to design a "Digital" Fax sender.  This
was pre PC Computers so George did it with CMOS parts.  I don't remember it
working but I do remember it made lots of small fires as the receiving Faxes
were "burned" onto the paper.  Boy did that stuff stink.  We used bristles
from wire brushes and had a ball.  What a great bunch of guys they were.

73 de Jay W0VNE