KI6SN's QRP column in the July 2008 edition of WorldRadio magazine focuses on remembrances of QRPers in their Novice days - and how Novices and QRPers during a 15-year period (from 1961 to 1976) were a band of brothers.
During that period, among my best friends growing up in Chelmsford, MA as a Novice in the mid-1960s were radio
amateurs Scott Higinbotham, WN1CMZ; Randy Fisher, WN1ECC; Tim Good, WN1ENP; and Rick Cowan, WN1ENQ. I was WN1DWL, circa 1965.
We had great times together in the neighborhood and on the air. We built our own gear, scrounging parts from discarded television sets people had set out the curb for the garbage trucks to pick up.
Only, we beat the trashmen to it, making early morning stops along our paper routes and hauling the broken TVs home.
QRP Amateur Radio Club International's guidelines at the time called for a 100-watt limit.
Novices during that period were limited to 75 watts. So all Novices,
by QRP ARCI definition, were QRPers.
In addition to those carried in the magazine article, there are more reflections here - with pictures - from today's QRPers who fondly remember their Novice days.
Click on the images for separate views of the pictures, graphs and charts accompanying the narratives.
Mark Langenfeld, WA9ETW,
Novice: WN9ETW, 1962
The photograph was taken early in my Novice career - before I added the DB-20.
My best guess is that the picture was taken in September or October of 1962.
I was pounding away on CW with the old J-38, although a brand new Vibroplex awaited on top of the transmitter.
The bug was a gift from my dad.
I had a Heathkit Twoer for 2-meter AM, as well, but it was on the other side of the room.
I still have the bug and the Twoer – also known as the Benton Harbor Lunchbox. People seemed to like my QSL card. I got lots of nice comments on return QSLs.The image is taken from the very last one I have.
What a great time I had – and continue to have – with ham radio!
Nick Kennedy, WA5BDU
Novice: WN5BDU, 1962Dad had a friend build a shelf in the store room of his tavern for my rig. I have a photo in which you can see the S-119 Sky Buddy II 3-tube receiver and the single tube 6146 transmitter for 80 and 40 meters, both built by Father Andrew, K5IVT.
The antenna was a random wire about 20 feet above ground and 75 feet long. Wa
ter followed it in once during a rain storm and drenched my license, thumb tacked to the wall above the WN5BDU QSL card in the picture.
The little white thing near my wrist was a plastic base with letters WN5BDU inserted. It arrived as a free promotion from World Radio Labs along with their catalog. The numerous ham catalogs I received after getting my license were a source of endless daydreams of great ham rigs.
The set up was a little less than optimum and I made a total of seven QSOs in my Novice ‘year.’ Back then, you surrendered your old license when upgrading, and I was surprised to see it come back to me stamped CANCELLED, along with my new WA5BDU license.
Bob Rosier, K4OCE
Novice: KN2CBB, 1952
To get my first ticket in 1952 - KN2CBB - and ran a home built 45 watt, crystal controlled rig on 3731 and I had modified an ARC5 receiver.
I'm surprised more didn't go the ARC5 route.
I forget which tube was in the transmitter.
Lots of transmitters and receivers were available on the surplus market, especially on Cortland Street.
That was the area of Manhattan known as Radio Row.
Accompanying this narrative is a picture of my early station. Surplus Equipment, homemade, gear, etc.
I got started in ham radio as a Novice at the age of 13. You could only have the Novice for one year, so a year later I went alone on the Lackawanna train from Morristown, N.J. to NYC to get my General class.
For a total cost of $58.20, I built a 45 foot tower out of wood.
The four legs were 2 x 2 , and held together by 1 x 2.
In the picture of the tower being raised, that’s me with the sledge, and my other young ham friends. We are still in contact today. An aircraft Prop-pitch motor at the base turned the pipe that went to the top and to a beam.My very first DX was with KP4GN. Probably my most exciting moment of my ham career, especially since I was crystal controlled on 80 meters in the narrow Novice band.
In high school we started our own Radio Club, gave classes, and had a station off the back of the
Chemistry Lab. This was at Morristown High School. One of my first home designed QRPp rigs operated on 20 meters. This was around 1964 and I couldn't find any transistors that would go to 15 meters.
I finally got a 2N3553 to work on 20 meters with around 5 watts. I started working lots of DX from the start.
Around 1968 I built a 4 element cubical quad and by 1971 I had worked about 150 countries and the first WAZ with 5 watts. Most hams thought that Mongolia was the only Zone 23, and nearly impossible to work assuming you ever heard one.
Although it took a while, I finally worked UA0YT in Zone 23. The secret was to know that a UA0 followed by "Y" was also in Zone 23.
A friend in New Zealand ZL2AFZ would often call me, and give me a report knowing I was running 7 watts input with a pair of 2N3553s (2nd generation of the Mini-rig).
After about a dozen calls, he said he couldn't believe how loud I was this particular evening.
I had an attenuator and started dropping power as we had done on other occasions. With all the attenuation in, he said “I'm still copying.” I had gone from 7 watts to 7 milliwatts. I pulled out one of the transistors and sent a short message.
He repeated the message exactly as I had sent it. I later measured the power at 3 milliwatts!
Todd Fonstad, N9NE
Novicr: KN9LWV, 1958
In 1959, KN9LWV, I sat at the BC-779A Super Pro receiver, circa World War II, with a Heathkit DX-20 transmitter partially visible at the right. This is a great hobby. My fat
her, a Silent Key, could never get over what his Christmas gift of the regenerative receiver kit started, and my mother could never get over the fact that my antenna needed modification - AGAIN! I grew up in a small community in central Wisconsin. My father bought me a Knight Ocean Hopper regenerative receiver kit for Christmas, 1957 when I was 13. I had it together in a few days and was soon getting those beautiful QSL cards from Radio Moscow and Radio Habana Cuba. There was a little "door" in the top of the receiver where one would change band coils. The valves were from England. I can still remember the smell of those hot little tubes.
My across-the-street neighbor was a dentist, W9DPN. I had learned the code by rote in Boy Scouts, but Doc showed me his station and how he actually communicated on CW with his Viking Ranger, HQ-129X, and a trap vertical. Within a few weeks, I passed the novice exam and had to wait about 8 weeks (forever) to get my ticket, KN9LWV, on March 19, 1958. I then had to wait another two months before I could get the money together to buy a used Heath DX-20, sans meter!
I recall stringing an 80 meter dipole and a 40 meter folded dipole above our small yard, between neighbors' trees. My 'TR switch' was a DPDT ceramic hand switch, and I "tuned" the transmitter by placing a light bulb between the two center contacts of the switch while holding the key down, and dipping and loading for maximum brilliance. I was probably running QRP into the antennas for the remainder of 12 months then given to Novices. Using that Knight regenerative was a real education!
Every time I would key the rig, the receiver would blank out and, of course, there was no sidetone. I lost many contacts either by touching the front panel or by getting my hand too close to it, thereby changing the frequency. Later, my dad found out that a WWII veteran in town had a Hammarlund BC-779A Super Pro receiver in his warehouse, and I was given it on permanent loan. Despite its musty smell, it served me well for several years before it died. 1958 was right at or after the greatest peak among modern solar cycles if I recall correctly. I would run home from high school, get on 15 meters (yes . . . the Super Pro only went up to 20 Megacycles, but I was able to 'pull' it up to get above 21 Mcs), work several Europeans, eat, and run back to school, all in one hour. What excitement!
My first DX QSL card was from G3BRA. As a 14-year old, I was so embarrassed. By the time I had finished my Novice stint, I had earned the ARRL CW Proficiency Receiving award at 20 wpm. I never had a hand key. My grandfather had been a telegrapher on the Soo Line RR, and I inherited his1928 Vibroplex bug. Within that year, I passed my conditional exam, and some years later (in the late 1960s), I took the Chicago and Northwestern passenger train from downtown Oshkosh to within a few blocks of the Federal Building in downtown Chicago. The train was scheduled to get there by about noon, but due to some sort of problem, it arrived at 2 p.m. I had studied for the Extra, and now had less than 3 hours to pass the CW and technical exams for the General, Advanced, and Extra. I got to the Extra with 20 minutes to spare . . . passed the code, but had to rush the exam such that when "The Man" corrected it, he stated in a loud voice "You fail!" I finally passed the Extra in Dallas in the early 1970s while a graduate student at the University of Oklahoma.
My wife and I drove from Norman to the Federal Building there, and I took the code test in a small room. Receiving was no problem, but I hadn't touched a hand key much, and sending at 20 wpm was a real trial. The written exam was taken in a large room, filled with 30 or 40 people. The answers were coded onto an answer sheet (no written answers or schematics by then), and I took it to the glass-enclosed office where a young lady corrected it by hand. I was confident I had passed and was astounded to see her check one answer after another as incorrect with her red pencil! She looked at me and said "I'm sorry, but you failed." I was so upset and said "What?" so loud that most ofthe heads in the examining room raised to see what the ruckus was!
I told her that it was possible that I had failed, but not by that many questions. She re-examined my answer sheet, then sheepishly told me that she had just used the wrong exam master! The correct one exonerated me, and rest ishistory. I changed K9LWV to N9NE soon after that because it sounded nice on CW.
Henry Greeb, N8XX
Novice: WNØFVD, 1951
I began in 1951 when I went to Omaha Nebraska for the Novice test. Don't remember how long it took to get my license - WNØFVD - but the first contact was after I got home from high school, using my father's rig.
It had a pair of 1625s modulated by another pair of 1625s, but I turned it down to 75 watts and disabled the modulator.
It took over an hour to get the other fellow's name, QTH, etc.By the time the QSO was finished, dinner had already started.
When I came out my mother was worried because I was "white as a sheet." Father said I'd get over it.
My first personal rig was a pair of Command sets - a BC-457 transmitter (nominally covered 4 to 5.3 MHz, so I padded it down to cover 3.5 to 4 MHz by tweaking the capacitors in the thing.
I converted the VFO to a crystal oscillator and got $15 for a writeup in CQ in 1952, a big sum for a high school student.
The receiver was a BC-454 which was wide as a barn door, but both were cheep. One of them was donated by a ham friend of my father.
The only thing in the power supply which had to be purchased outright was a 24 volt transformer to power the filament supply.
The power transformer came from a defunct receiver, produced about 350 volts, which gave about 50 watts input.
No one measured power output in those daze. My first antenna was a random wire about 130-feet long, between two outbuildings - one which I converted to a ham shack.I "tuned" for maximum brilliance with the roller inductor inside the Command transmitter and a neon bulb with a loop next to the antenna.
Jerry Felts, NR5A
Novice: WN5TFU, 1967
I wish to heck I had pictures of my Novice station, but we were not much of picture taking family. My original Novice station was a Knight T-60 and BC-455. Later I got an SX-140 and DX-60B. The first transmitter I ever built was a Scrounger.
It's funny, but that's the transmitter I use the most - even today (pictured).
I've always enjoyed Novice type stations. In fact I have a DX-60B, HG-10B, HR-10B, and HW-16 sitting on a shelf right now. Also a T-60, HT-40, SX-140, R-100A, and R-55A. My favorite set up is on the other bench where you'll find my trusty Scrounger 6V6 transmitter and BC-348Q. I'm rebuilding a old Knight T-50 transmitter.
