Amateur Radio Station
WB2QMY

This Polaroid shot is the only known photo of my original Novice station, which was taken in 1978 or ‘79 at my shack in Henrietta, NY. The station consisted of a Hallicrafters HT-40 Transmitter (far left), a Hallicrafters HA-5 VFO, a Realistic DX-150A Receiver, and matching SP-150 external speaker. The straight key is a J-38 model, which I still use today.

The receiver was a present to me from my parents, which I received on Christmas morning,1976. I still remember hooking it up to a random wire antenna that snowy morning, and hearing hams on SSB for the first time! I had owned inexpensive shortwave radios prior to this, but the DX-150A was my first “real” communications receiver. The transmitter, VFO, and key were purchased at the 1977 Rochester Hamfest for $75, shortly after I passed my Novice test in the spring of that year.

I have fond memories of using this station almost every day for about 3 1/2 years, primarily on 80 meter CW. Most people consider 80 meters to be mainly a nighttime band, and most useful in the cooler months of the year when static is low, but I used it year round and got to know the behavior of the band pretty well. In the daytime, I learned about its regional coverage and worked hundreds of stations within about a 300 mile radius of my QTH. New York, NJ, PA, Ohio, and Ontario, Canada are all well represented in my early logs. Some of my most memorable QSOs were with other new Novices, like Phil, WA2LLO, Mike, KA2AMH, and John, WB2QDZ.

Why did I start out on 80m? Well, it probably stems from my first live introduction to ham radio at my friend Doug Hoff’s house (then WA2IUQ, now KI8KN). Doug had an Army surplus transmitter/receiver that was set up for crystal-controlled operation on two separate frequencies: 3706 and 3718 kHz. I reasoned that if I was to work him, I would need to be set up for 80m, and after all, he seemed to have pretty good results with the band. 80 meters remains a favorite band for me today.

Anyway, with my station all set up on top of a dresser, it was time to put some wire in the air. I hastily constructed a half-wave dipole antenna, which just fit between a telephone pole in our front yard and a good-sized silver maple tree in the back yard. The antenna was up about 15 feet in the air at the pole end, and about 25 feet up at the tree end.

Today, I have a full-featured Icom 746PRO and an assortment of other rigs, which I enjoy immensely, but there is nothing that could replace the magic of those early years with simple equipment and  the enthusiasm of being a newly minted ham! One of my goals is to re-establish my original Novice station and make it fully operational. I will be hard pressed to use any frequency other than 3718 kHz! Will you be listening, Doug?

This photo was taken at my first house, on Garden Parkway, Henrietta, NY, which I bought when I was 24 years old. Of course, one of the first orders off business was building up the ham shack! Mike Marlowe, N2IYP, assisted me with his carpentry skills.

32 years in the making, I finally achieved Worked All States (WAS) on August 28, 2009. I am only the 53,937th person to receive this coveted award! I am not a "paper chaser" by any means, but in going through my QSL cards a few years ago, I realized I was getting very close to achieving WAS without even trying. I needed confirmation from just four more states to complete my quest. The final state and hardest for me to achieve? Nevada! There are plenty of hams in Nevada, but they just didn't happen to be on the air when I was on. Thank you for the final WAS contact, Bob, NV7P!

Figure 13

I designed and printed this QSL card in an offset printing class I took while in high school (1980). We were required to complete a 2-sided project with two colors, so I chose to do something that I could actually use! Since my dad was also a ham, I decided to create a "dual" card that either of us could mail out. For you printing enthusiasts out there, the job was run on an A.B. Dick 360 offset press with traditional aluminum plates. It had to be run through the press three times--once for black ink, again for red ink, and a final time for printing the back side (see below).

Figure 14

This part of the card is not very exciting, but it contains the vital information for confirming a ham radio contact. Note that the "R.S.T." (Readability, Strength, and Tone) is shown with periods. My printing teacher had to proof every job before it went on the press, and he suggested that this be abbreviated. It is typically shown as "RST" on most cards, but it would have been difficult to explain to a non-ham, and I figured he really was not wrong, so I used the periods. I was just happy to have my own QSL cards in color!

Figure 15

This is a photo I took of Fred Hammond, VE3HC, whom I met while on a visit to his radio museum in Guelph, Ontario in the late 1990s. The Hammond Museum of Radio has since been relocated to a new wing of the Hammond Corporation which was built specifically for this purpose. You can get a virtual tour of this amazing museum at www.hammondmuseumofradio.org.

On the day this photo was taken, Fred had taken time out of his schedule to give our small group a personal tour of the museum and Hammond factory. This was followed by some on-air operating (AM, of course), and a delightful lunch at the Swiss Chalet in Guelph. Over lunch, Fred shared with us his history in the ham radio hobby, which went back to the 1920s. It is a day I will long remember.

Fred is now a silent key, but many operators will recall his booming signal, great audio, and trademark way of giving his callsign: "This is VE3 H-henry, C-charlie, in Guelph, Ontario." Fred also had an adage that I found interesting "If you're going to put out a signal, make it a good one!" He certainly lived up to this with his excellent antenna systems and high power transmitters. Fred was a very special man who contributed much to our hobby. You can read more about his accomplishments on the museum webpage given above.

Figure 16

WB2QMY / 1929 station / December 2010

Click on the photo above to get a closer look at the old breadboard transmitter in the lower left side of the picture. I built this rig in 1995 with help from my friend Bruce Kelley, W2ICE (SK). From my very earliest days in the radio hobby I've been intrigued with what the early wireless pioneers were able to accomplish with rudimentary equipment. One of my favorite books that introduced me to ham radio was Here's Your Hobby...Amateur Radio. It described early experimenters going to their attics and garages each night to use home built spark coil transmitters to contact other like-minded experimenters. With headphones clamped to their heads, they would try for ever-farther distances. I wasn't even a licensed ham yet, but these stories intrigued me greatly. I wondered how close I could come (legally) to re-creating these types of transmissions someday.

Over the years I looked at many old circuits, but it always seemed that the challenge of obtaining the parts and getting such a rig on the air would be insurmountable. Being a student of radio history, I ordered a reprint copy of the 1930 book, How to Become a Radio Amateur from Lindsay Publications in 1994. In this book, I saw complete plans for building a starter transmitter and receiver as it would have been done at the time. I mentioned my dream to build an old transmitter to Bruce Kelley, Curator of the Antique Wireless Association. This resulted in an open invitation to stop by his famed "barn" and get all of the parts I needed. The barn was the former the site of the AWA museum before it was moved to the Academy building in Bloomfield, NY, and now served as Bruce's personal garage. The second floor was where all of the interesting parts were.

On a snowy Saturday afternoon, I arrived at Bruce's house with my plans in hand. He looked them over and gave his approval for the design. He said he actually remembered the transmitter from his earliest days in the hobby (he was first licensed in 1929) and gave me a box to put the parts in. We then went to the barn, where he found a Cardwell variable capacitor, a silver-plated tank coil, "beehive" insulators, authentic Fahnstock binding clips, "bathtub" capacitors, an '01A tube, and all of the other small parts I would need for the project. With my box loaded with all of the parts, I headed home to get started. I bought the smoothest piece of pine board I could find, varnished it as called for in the 1930 article, and set about the task of mounting all of the various parts on the board just as it showed in the pictures.

In a few weeks I was done with the project and brought it to show Bruce. He complemented me on a very fine construction job and told me it was time to get it on the air. He gave me some tips for how to link-couple the tank coil to the antenna, and said that my "battery eliminator" kit for 1920s radios would work fine for the transmitter. (The eliminator was a power supply kit I built years earlier for a 3-dial broadcast set. The kit came from Antique Electronic Supply of Arizona.)

I figured the time had arrived to try out this rig! I hooked up the power supply, antenna and an old straight key. My first attempts at contacting someone on 80 meters (3.6 MHz) were not very successful. I was able to check into the ONTARS net at 3.755 though, and this gave me some encouragement. I tuned back down the band where I had been calling CQ earlier and heard another CQ which was not very strong. Conventional logic would say it's not worth calling a weak station when you are running low power as I was (about 1-Watt output). If they are weak with what is likely 100-Watt transceiver (the average power of most modern ham rigs), what are the chances of them hearing my low power station? Nevertheless, I decided to call this station, KA2PLW, and to my surprise he answered me! His name was Randy, in Trumansburg, NY, which is about 50 miles southeast of me. He explained that he too, was running a breadboard transmitter very similar to mine, and was an AWA member!

Randy and I started a friendship based on our mutual interest in vintage radio and membership in the AWA. I have since contacted many other hams with the rig, and in the 2010 AWA Bruce Kelley Memorial Contest, I managed to work 25 stations with it! The photo above shows me working the contest. As Bruce told me, using an antique rig is like having a Model T classic car; you wouldn't want to use it everyday, but you would enjoy using it occasionally, when conditions are ideal. Likewise, I enjoy breaking out this rig and putting it on the air from time to time. I think of Bruce often, and am thankful for the help he gave me to get this vintage rig on the air. If you hear me on 80 or 40 meters with a fashionably chirpy signal (not too bad), be sure to give me a call!