HAM Radio

A Summer Job in the Days of Telegraph

When I was fifteen or sixteen I got a summer job with RCA as a messenger boy delivering and picking up RCA Radiograms in the Wall Street area of lower Manhattan.  The RCA Central Office for New York City was at 66 Broad Street, in the same area as the Cunard White Star line office […]

Adventures in Strange Lands Part II : Meteor Reflections

The plane from Goose Bay, Labrador slowly drops into the narrow crack , thousand foot cliffs on either side, no sign of an airfield anywhere, nothing but the glacier dead ahead. Greenland—-the world’s largest ice cube!  It’s two miles thick in the center! Then, suddenly, a sharp turn and “Plonk”—we immediately touch down. Engines roar […]

Morse Code: The original “texting”

Morse code is a very strange type of communications.  At first glance it appears as simply a substitution of dots and dashes for the letters of the alphabet.  But then, as you get into it, Morse reveals all the twists and side tracks and inconsistencies of any foreign language.  And, let me tell you from […]

A DX-er’s Lament: There has to be a better way

Working DX can be really frustrating these days.  Ham radio is supposed to be fun, talking to stations in far off parts of the world, using equipment you have built yourself, and so on!  But sometimes contacting DX these days has evolved into a real mess.  Let me describe how this has come about and […]

Alaska Adventures: Getting Wheels

There are many little adventures that I barely remember about my ham radio and other activities in Alaska.  Here are a few of them. Charlie Bellman, whose call I think was W9KMH, was in charge of the motor pool. He and I had one good adventure.  Now understand that no one had a private vehicle […]

Chasing DX: Christmas Joy! (Maybe)

Late Breaking News! You may remember my previous post where I tried to work Rotuma Island to no avail. Well, I think, maybe, I have finally worked the station!!! A few days ago I was idly tuning the bands when I came upon a huge pileup in the CW portion of the17 meter band. From […]

Alaska Antenna Adventures: Beer Cans and Moose!

My adventures in Alaska were a great introduction to “home brew” construction.  Antennas are a big “do it yourself” area.  You build it, you adjust it, you re-build it, you make it perfect, and in the next ice storm it comes down!!!  That was in 1948. I find myself going through the same cycle today, […]

Alaska 1948: Stove Cold!

That stirs up some memories — thinking of my adventures in Alaska in the late 1940’s.  My ham radio station was built in a Quonset hut which I lived in and shared with 3 other guys.  This is a sheet steel half tube some 16 ft across and 32 ft long resting on 4 ft […]

The Ups and Downs of Sunspot Cycles

The good news is that the 10 meter band is wide open.  The bad news is that I have low power (100 watts) on 10 meters and no antenna.  Wait! Wait!  The good news is that my vertical antenna for the 40 meter band loads up swell on 10 meters.  And you can go around […]

Putting the “human” back into human interfaces

In the latest QST, Frank Columbus, WA2KWR, writes the following: “— I find the current lot of handheld and mobile Amateur Radios to be overly complex.” Frank goes on for a page describing the failure of modern radios to provide a workable human interface.  His words echo mine of a decade or so ago.   Those […]