[SCCC] W6ANN-W6BA Nostalgia Days

[Steve Harrison]

On 6/13/2024 8:48 AM, Michael S. Mitchell W6RW wrote:
> Hello Steve. Wow! Those calls W6BA/W6ANN bring back some old memories. I spent many many hours along with others operating many multi multi dx contests at Bill's 29 palms location. One of our operators was a teenager named Danny AD6DO who is now N6MJ. It was fun watching him operate back in those days!
I operated at Bill's for only a couple of years, long before Danny
appeared I guess, in about 1972-74 or so. Fellow ops with me were WA6EPQ
(now N6AR), WA6GLD (SK), maybe W6JPH (also SK) or somebody else who I
didn't know; and of course, Bill, himself. This was before Bill got the
majority of the towers up, and used a AB-577 or two (or maybe phone
poles, I don't remember) to suspend an 80m dipole. (There are still five
~100-ft towers up on the property today, which is owned by his
granddaughter, one with the remnants of two yagis.) He did have some
monoband beams on one tower at that time, though. I operated with Bill's
4-1000 on 80, which had a propensity to flash over from time to time,
making everybody else jump as a shotgun seemed to go off in that tiny
shack but the first time that happened, I was totally unaware, not
having heard it bang between the static crashes on 80, and wondered why
everyone was suddenly staring at me with wide-open pikachu mouths. Back
in those days, it was the very dickens to work Europe on 80m; I was
always surprised when I got through. Not like today with our
fanchey-schmanchey highly-filtered radios which routinely rack up a
couple dozen or more Europeans a night on 80m even with low wire antlers...
> As a side note, Bill was the original president of the Southern California DX Club and made the very first contact on 10 meters from the West Coast to the East Coast.
I didn't know him when he lived on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, where I
grew up; I suspect he lived behind the gates in Rolling Hills Estates or
someplace where I could not wander around looking for ham antennas while
riding my Schwinn balloon-tired bicycle. I went to SCDXC meetings
courtesy of Don Wallace who'd stop by and pick me up from home during
the late '60s and early '70s. I was always astonished when Don would
park his El Dorado convertible outside Clifton's on the street, or maybe
around the block, in downtown LA without a care in the world, and we'd
come back after meetings to a whole car: all four wheels still on it, no
slit top, and the whole Swan 400 radio setup still in the car. Nobody
ever bothered his ragtop that I know of, and I never noticed Don paying
off any of the street thugs to guard his car while gone 8-D
> I miss the chats that I used to have with Bill.

I didn't know him that well.

Steve, K0XP (ex-WB6PKA)