I have been enjoying reading the tributes to Ed that have been circulating
around. It's enabled me relive many fond old contesting memories.
In the mid 60s I attended the Univ of Michigan along with a number of contest
lovers like Tom Russel (then W8FAW, now N4KG), Don Karvonen (then and now
K8MFO) and Bill Myers (then K2SIL & KH6RS now K1GQ). We tried our best to
put our university club station, W8UM, on the contesting map. Our goal, like
every other multi-multi crew of the era was to make a decent showing against
Ed Bissel's seasoned crew at W3MSK. In our first effort we had a great time
but fell woefully short of Ed's supurb score, but our picture, taken on the
roof of the East Engineering Building sporting a sign with the words "BEAT
MSK! found its way into QST's score-reporting issue. In those days the ARRL
contest was a two-weekend affair, and the next year Ed's crew entered the
contest using a different call for each of the two weekends. We of couse used
W8UM for both weekends and ended up beating the W3MSK one-weekend score. Our
picture once again made QST, but this time the sign read "WE BEAT MSK!" The
next year, Jack Colson, W3TMZ, called us and asked if we could send an
operator or two to the DC area to help them. I accepted the invitation, and
thus began a long relationship with Ed, his seasoned crew and his super
station. I can still remember being picked up by Jack at the Washington DC
airport and transported around the DC area at breakneck speed in his sporty,
red Porsche 912 roadster. Ed's station was of couse a dream come true. I'd
never seen a 3 element 40M yagi, let alone a 5 element monster. It sprung
out of the woods (Ed lived in a game preserve area so he couldn't cut down
any trees) on a 145-foot tower and was a sight to behold! I'd never even
seen separate towers for each band each supporting a 7 element yagi. Note
that Ed's yagis were all home spun and modeled in place by trial and error.
Ed was a real "seat-of-the-pants" guy. I was tapped to be a 15M operator
along with Charlie (Then W3FYS, later W6UA). The station occupied a fairly
large finished room in Ed's basement. The 4-1000 amplifiers stood in
adjacent rack panels along one wall of the shack with the 160M position's
Johnson Ranger stuffed in the middle. In those days there were output power
restrictions on TopBand. The main operating positions occupied the other 3
walls - 10M on one short wall, 40M, 15M and 80M on the long wall, and 20M on
the other short wall. I'd never seen so much Collins gear in my life. Over
the next 10 years I was a frequent visitor and 15M cw operator for Ed meeting
and learning from many fine contest operators like Bob (K3EST), Fred (K3ZO),
Don (W3EIS/W3IN/N4IN) and of course the grand gentleman of them all, Ed
(W3MSK/W3AU).
To quote Bob Hope, "Thanks for the memories." A salute to you, Ed Bissel !
73 de John, W8CQN / W8FJ
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