W4PM "The Early Years"

The Early Years as K4ZRX   by W4PM

It was the spring of 1961 and I had upgraded to Conditional Class a month or so before.  I had been saving money from my paper route and finally had enough to buy a Knight Kit VFO from Allied Electronics.  I put it together quickly and, wonder of wonders, it worked.  With my Conditional Class license and a VFO I could now tune from one end of the band to the other and not be limited to three 40 meter novice band crystal frequencies. I was burning the midnight oil working those last few west coast stations on 40 meters for my WAS.  Being a junior in high school there was also homework to do, but who wants to study when the band is open to California.      

Report card time came and somehow a "D" appeared indicating my lack of work in Spanish II.  To add insult to injury, my Spanish teacher, Mrs. Kersey, dropped by our house to see my parents.  With tears in her eyes, she told my parents how I should be an "A" student if I would just apply myself and that she could not understand why I wasn't doing better in her class.  She may as well have taken me out and shot me!

My dad calmly assured her that I WOULD do better.  He then went up to my room, cut the various wires to my Heathkit DX 20, my Hallicrafters 8R40 receiver with Heath Q-multiplier and a magic eye tube for an S-meter, and my homebrew plate modulator with that pair of surplus 1625's from Burstein Appleby and locked them away in a cabinet.  "OK", he said, "when I see at least a 'B' grade in Spanish II you MAY get your radio gear back".  I was crushed. 

Fortunately, he missed the VFO which I was currently modifying with some NPO capacitors to stop the drift.  He also missed a little power supply I had built, complete with two selenium rectifiers and two swinging chokes.  It had powered my first receiver, a 6U8 tube regenerative receiver. Since I no longer used that gear it was safely hidden away on a shelf in the top of my closet.  In addition, he forgot about my homebrew K2POO keyer and those two J-38's, back to back, I was using for a paddle.

There was no way I was going to be off the air for six weeks!  An idea started to form.  A bike trip to the five and dime store yielded a nice plastic sandwich box.  In the junk box (Dad missed that too) was some miniductor stock, a nice Cardwell miniature variable capacitor, some resistors, a fixed capacitor or two, a nine pin tube socket, and an almost new 7 pin 6AQ5 beam power pentode. That was all the parts I needed for a one tube link coupled output transmitter.  I hooked the VFO and power supply to it, tuned it for resonance by adjusting the Cardwell capacitor and link until the bright red of the 6AQ5 plate softened to a dull pink and the light bulb dummy load started to glow.  I figured it was working but with no receiver how could I really tell?

Now,  what to do for a receiver.  That little regenerative receiver just won't do the job - too unstable.   On my birthday the previous June I had received a six transistor broadcast band AM radio.  I wondered if I could somehow get that thing to receive 40 meters.  While experimenting a bit and wondering just  how to build a simple DC receiver,  I happened to put the transistor radio's loop stick antenna up next to the tank coil on my newly built 40 meter transmitter.  The VFO was still running and I was hearing 40 meter CW signals through that little transistor AM receiver!  As I tuned the VFO I could tune across the 40 meter band and hear other signals.  What was going on?  Why was it working?  Then I thought, "who cares how or why it works, let's just see if I can make a QSO with this thing".  

I hooked up the end fed wire which ran from my bedroom window to the big tree next door and fired the little rig up the next day after school and called CQ.  A strong signal came back.  It was Bob, W4MYA who lived about 4 blocks away.  "Hey dude, I thought your Dad locked up your radio gear."  "R " , I replied, "He thinks so too".  Then Mike, K4VWR, broke in. This was DX. He lived about 3 miles away.  The same question and the same answer followed.   I had to end the QSO promptly because Dad was due home any minute.  "Just wait until tonight after he goes to bed", I thought.

Bedtime came, and I fired it up.  I worked a W8, and then a W0.  I couldn't believe the thing was working.  I tuned up to the novice band and heard a WV6 slowly calling CQ CQ CQ …..  I slowed the POO key down to minimum and called him.  HE CAME BACK!  My report was 339 but he heard me!  In the weeks that followed many QSO's made their way into my National Radio logbook and the QSL's kept coming.  Dad asked about this.  How was I getting cards when my radio was locked away?  "Some guys just take a long time to QSL", I replied.  I never told him and he never found out what I was doing. 

I had learned one lesson though and I got an "A" the next six weeks in my Spanish II class.  Dad gave me my BIG rig back.  That made QSO's easier but, you know, I really missed that little one tube transmitter once it was relegated back to the junk box.  Well, maybe not all that much!