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...

 

Anybody care to share some first time CQWW stories??

 

Thanks de Rick NQ4I