It was probably at K5JA sometime in the late 70s. Running JAs on 10 and 15.
Most likely, these were the same ops we'd work in the ARRL DX contest, with
us struggling to copy their reports of '59, zero-one-zero..' , or even '59,
zero-zero-five'. Scenarios like that are gone forever.
73,
Ian, K5ZM
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www.k5zm.com
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From: secc-bounces at contesting.com [mailto:secc-bounces at contesting.com] On
Behalf Of Rick Dougherty NQ4I
Sent: Friday, September 05, 2008 3:10 PM
To: SECC
Subject: [SECC] CQWW SSB approaches
Hi Guys...its about 7 weeks to go to the premier SSB contest....I will never
forget my first in 1963 or so...I operated with a high school pal..we used a
Johnson Ranger and Hallicrafters SX-101A for our first station and a
Heathkit Apache and a SX111 ...the antenna was a Gonset Triband beam...they
only made a few and it wasn't that good...I had it on a fold over tower at
40 ft...my shack was in a bomb shelter, a railroad boxcar buried 6 ft under
the ground...this was at the end of the Kennedy-Kruschev' standoff over
Cuba....conditions were a lot like they are now...10m was only open for a
few South American contacts...15m we made maybe a few EU's and 20m was the
best band...40m we worked VK3ATN for a real exciting contact! He was on SSB
and we were on AM (ancient mode) and he actually heard us! Its was a
tremendous thrill to make a qso that far away on 40m....I think we ended up
with nearly 250 qso's and we were extremely proud of our effort...later in
1965 when I finally got a SSB rig, the Halicrafters HT-37, I really felt
competitive...I had a homemade 811 linear...it could work OK on 80 and 40m
with 4 tubes...so that was about 900 watts...to go to 15m or 10m, I had to
kill the High Voltage and pull two tubes out, then with 2 tubes it would
work ok there...so that was about 400 watts....I think in 1965 I made nearly
400 qso's....and I had a much better antenna then too..a Moseley TA-36 and
it was on top of a telephone pole at 60ft....still in the bomb shelter
shack..it was cool in the summer and warm in the winter....still had the old
home made 811A amp...
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Anybody care to share some first time CQWW stories??
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Thanks de Rick NQ4I
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