[QCWA] Thanks to all of you...

[Tom Repstad]

Thanks to all of you, for the information and your support.

My first call was WN2WTQ in 1974, which I got when I was at Radioman School in the Coast Guard in Petaluma CA. The FCC allowed military officers to administer tests for servicemen. Call was base on your home of record (NY at the time) not where you took the exam. 

I remember Master Chief Radioman Rhoades, who was chief of the school. He had a ham shack in a small room there. He had an incredibly beautiful complete Collins S-line setup and a beam. The rest of us who got our licences had a DX-60 (which we tuned with a light bulb to check our SWR) and a R-390 receiver, and a long wire anttena. When he was not in the shack he'd let us connect to his beam. My first contact was with Japan!!! 

Sometimes I'd be in the shack with him and listen to him send morse code, sounded like RTTY, he never wrote anything down, copied it all in his head... 


Again, thanks to all for your help :o)

--Tom
K1VG