Topband: Genius Loci

[John Vickers]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steve Ireland" <vk6vz at arach.net.au>
>
> Back in the 1960/70s, it was the tradition for all newly licensed radio
> amateurs in the UK to go onto topband, where they did their apprenticeship
> by building a 10W AM/CW transmitter to go with their ex-WW2 military
> surplus receiver, put up an inverted-L and try to work W1BB -

Hi steve, Sure would've been nice to have Email in those days, much less a 
Dx cluster. I spent months in the early 60's sending post cards to Mr Stew 
for skeds until I finally worked him. My rig was homebrew and don't have a 
clue how little output it had. Surely no more than 10 or 15 watts. The hard 
part was that living in Georgia at that time we had no allocation on 160. I 
lived on the Savannah river and on the other side was South Carolina and 
they had a small 25 kc band with 50 W power limit. I would visit my cousins 
across the river and try to work W1BB every weekend that my parents would 
let me. Lowband chat and Dx cluster would have made it much easier, but I 
wonder if I would have been infected with the same quanity of "Genius loci" 
? Lets hope so.
73 John WA4TT