Amateur Radio

[Sgare]

Technician 1983-84. General a few years later. Extra class a few year ago.
I have had years of not being active but currently I use 2 meters while driving and have some good vertical antennas at the house for HF.

 

[jcfradio]

Yes, I hardly recognize amateur radio equipment of today. I too, have fond memories of trolling the electronics surplus stores with my dad.



Here's the receiver that I first learned how to listen to shortwave. The thing was built like a tank. Still worked (or at least still powered up) when I sold it a couple years ago. Let's see if anyone can identify it?

View attachment 38648

View attachment 38647

Looks like a National Radio, but not sure of the model number (honest, I didn't zoom in on the dial!)

 

[tfudtuckerpucker]

I suspect it's this one
National Company NC-2-40D

Reminds me of when I was a young teenager, doing SWL, and listing to Radio Peking talking about "the american imperialist aggressors" in Vietnam.

 

[stepford]

Reminds me of when I was a young teenager, doing SWL, and listing to Radio Peking talking about "the american imperialist aggressors" in Vietnam.

At least that was probably more interesting than listening to all the college students talking about exactly the same thing...

 

[Qs Laptop]

I suspect it's this one
National Company NC-2-40D

Yep, that's it. IIRC, it was built in 1949.

It had a unique feature whereby you would pull out on the main tuning knob and then rotate it to switch bands, 10 meter, 20 meter, 40 meter, etc., then push it back in and tune across the frequency spectrum.

 

[Sangiovese]

Got my Novice in 1983, Technician the following year and Advanced a couple of years after that. Been mostly inactive but I fire up the rig now and then to see what's happening on the bands. Bought an Icom IC7300 last year after selling my old IC-735. W9---

 

[homestead]

Got my 2nd Class Radiotelephone License in 1973. Never had to use it but I did work some in RF in my career. Built a VSWR meter for tuning antenna's and a CB kicker for fun.
Seems like it was mostly vacuum tube stuff on the test back then.

 

[Sgare]

Got my Novice in 1983, Technician the following year and Advanced a couple of years after that. Been mostly inactive but I fire up the rig now and then to see what's happening on the bands. Bought an Icom IC7300 last year after selling my old IC-735. W9---

My first HF Rig bought 11/1985 was an ICOM IC-735. It was my only HF rig up till about 5 years ago when it started to act up so I bought an IC-7200.

 

[eytonxav]

I could not find any pics of my former shack which I sold off before we downsized, but I did find a pic of my Zero Five 10-40M vertical. Painted it green for stealth, but still had douce bag neighbor complain. The city and HOA told him to go pound sand.

 

[youbet]

W9** 20 wpm Extra. Licensed 61 years. Took the Exams in Chicago back when you still had to do schematics and send with a hand key. Yes, I’m a geezer!

I have some “modern” gear but still enjoy my classic Collins, Drake and Hallicrafters set-ups with home brew 813’s. Primarily a CW op but enjoy several other modes from time to time.

It’s been a fun hobby.

 

[braumeister]

So many fond memories of the old ham days.

A popular vacuum tube used in amplifiers was the 807. It was roughly the size and shape of a beer can, so "807" became a slang term among hams in the old days for a beer. "Well, FB OM, I'll say 73 for now, it's time to grab an 807." Utterly incomprehensible gibberish unless you were a ham.

Another thing I enjoyed for a number of years was RTTY (Radioteletype). When a big corporation decided to modernize, they offered their teletype machines to hams at no cost, just to get them out of the buildings. We hooked them up to radios, both HF and VHF, and had great fun leaving an early version of text messages for each other. Even before ASCII, these monsters used Baudot code that was painfully slow by today's standards but seemed wonderful at the time.

 

[Qs Laptop]

Here's a picture of my rig that I used in the early 1970's. Believe it or not, this is a mobile rig from around 1960-1962 or thereabouts. One unit was the receiver, the other was the transmitter. People would put this pair in their cars!

I had a homebrew power supply that I used to power this set.

 

[eytonxav]

I started with a short wave radio and then a CB as a kid. Then it took me another 50 years or so to get into Ham radio.

I can still remember being about 12 yo, and climbing a 20' ladder holding a super magnum CB antenna mounted on a 10' mast in one hand, and attaching it to brackets on the side of the house outside my bedroom window. I certainly could not pull off that feat today.

 

[skyking1]

Great thread and nice equipment pictures

 

[nphx]

o. I remember walking through the army surplus stores on Canal Street in Manhattan that were full of WW II military radios that could be modified for the ham bands (big and heavy, referred to as boat anchors).

In my high school days, those electronic surplus shops on Canal Street were awesome! I still have my ARC-5 NOS and chose an engineering career after fiddling with radio repairs and mods.

 

[Richard4444]

In 1962, I was a novice, WN2*** and now Advanced KA1**. It was a ton of fun as a teenager, did the Field Days, MARS, building radios and 'working all continents,' etc. I still have all of the QSL cards I amassed and have maintained my license although I have not been active for a long time. Because of that teenage interest, I began college majoring in Electrical Engineering, and switched majors my sophomore year.
All good !

Rich

 

[NW-Bound]

Never a Ham, but it was radio that got me started in electronics. One day, when I was 12, I was walking past a bookstore when I saw a book on some radio projects, starting from a simple crystal radio going up to a multi-tube superheterodyne AM radio. I bought the book and was hooked.

Not a Ham, but that did not keep me from trying to build transmitters. I kept the power fairly low, but did have some real transmitting tubes in my inventory. Yes, closing my eyes, I can still picture my shiny 6146B tubes in my mind as yesterday. Never did much with them though. In my teenage years, I spent a lot of time reading the 1961 ARRL Handbook cover to cover. The book was already old when I bought it, but it was what I had. I did have a few more books on transistors though.

In college and in my work, with my education and career being in GNC (Guidance, Navigation, and Control), I did not do much with RF, but my interest still persisted. I did end up doing some designs in consulting work at 470 MHz and 1.9 GHz in the late 90s.

At this point, in my electronics room, I still have 2 HP microwave spectrum analyzers, 2 7000-series Tektronix scopes, 1 HP RF generator, and 2 HP microwave generators.

I have not turned on the RF equipment for a while. For a hobby in retirement, I have been doing more work around the ARM microcontrollers, interfacing analog circuits to the MPU, and writing embedded code in C.

 

[Souschef]

All these posts bring back memories. My final HF station had a 2KW linear amp that I built, plus a 4 element beam on top of the house.
i could talk to the world LOL

 

[Sconie]

Amateur Extra here, but haven't been on the radio for quite some time.
73s....

 

[papaof2]

WB4xxx - passed the advanced test at the FCC office in Atlanta a l-o-n-g ago (while there for a company school). I've always been more interested in building/experimenting than rag-chewing. Most recent build was a [FONT=&quot]µBITX semi-kit SSB/CW transceiver - http://www.hfsignals.com/index.php/ubitx/

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[The HalfBreed]

N9XXX from the windy city....licensed about 30+ years, worked with many HAMS in the FAA doing communications work, licensed as a tech, got my advanced ~ 30 days later doing 15 wpm, but saw no need to upgrade for a 25 Khz advantage here and there, even when they got rid of the Morse requirements....naaaa.
Not very active anymore, but I listen a lot and on occasion, log into the 2M net.
73's all ~

 

[Bagabonz]

New Ham

I’ve had a long interest in the hobby and finally acted on it last summer. Bought a dual band ht then a 7300. I got the Technician license last September and upgraded to General last month. I’m 64 but most of the hams i’ve met in the local club are quite a bit older. Some got their license before i was born.
Anyway I absolutely love the hobby. Its all new to me so I don’t have any of the regret about how it used to be.
I now have 6 radios and an hf amp and i’m really looking forward to Solar Cycle 25!

 

[catii]

Advanced, K7xxx back in the early 60s.Hard to believe it's been that lomg!

 

[NXR7]

WB8xxx. Novice directly to Advanced in high school in 1972 and stayed there. First Class General Radiotelephone (with Ship Radar endorsement! ) in high school as well.

This was back when a "field trip" to the local FCC field office was required. I'd never been to Detroit before, or even Michigan.

Ray

 

[template]

I was a shortwave listener at age 11. A licensed ham in 1965 at age 13, leading to an Amateur Extra ticket. Except for the Novice test, I took all my ham and commercial radiotelephone exams at FCC offices.

Lots of good radio-related memories and friends until the early 1990s when I lost most interest in hamming. My licenses are still up to date. I sold the HF transceivers, but still have SWL receivers, scanners, and 2 meter FM rigs. The HF bands seem dead and there is very little activity on 2 meters these days compared to the past.