[TowerTalk] antennas/The good old days!

[w4ZW]

My good friend and neighbor in Owensboro, KY,  Dan Onley, K4ZRA, was the
Gotham poster boy for their ads.  His picture and the listing of all the
great DX he worked with his Gotham vertical was in just about every issue of
the ham magazines.  What they didn't say in the ad,  was that Dan's father
put a telephone pole in their back yard, and put four full sized 20M
aluminum radials under that Gotham vertical that made a killer ground plane
on 20M.  And if you remember the sunspot conditions at the time, you could
work 10W Europeans all day long on 10M.

I had just bought my first real receiver, a Hallicrafters SX-115,  after
saving my money for over a year and could hear a lot more than I could work
with my Globe Chief and folded dipole.  But Dan and I battled out the pile
ups and we usually both got through.  Ah, the wonderful DX world of a
teenager!



Jon Hamlet,  W4ZW
 
Casey Key Island, Florida
"A little piece of paradise in the Gulf of Mexico"