|
[AUSTIN,TEXAS] I still remember sitting at the
kitchen table in that small Austin apartment. The table was piled high with cupcake tins filled
with various electronic parts waiting to be soldered in place. The smell of solder permeated the air
every evening, and all day on the weekends.
 It seemed to take forever to finally complete the transceiver kit, and
was I ever disappointed when it smoked the first time I turned it on. (But, that's part of the
excitement of building your own... isn't it?) After a little troubleshooting, I found a missing
resistor, and I remember being amazed at how much smoke (and damage) that mistake caused. After
replacing a couple resistors in the circuit and a tube, I was ready for another test flight.
This time, no problems where encountered, and the radio aligned just like the book said it
should.
(Side note: While grilling steaks outside early one night, I met my next door neighbor in the
complex. It so happens he was a licensed Ham (Max-K5OVW), and he had gotten permission to place
a small tri-bander on the roof.)
Weeks earlier, I had purchased an Hy-Gain 18AVT vertical. It didn't take too long to assemble
it and place it just outside the bedroom window at the edge of the apartment parking lot. It
was installed on a small tripod, and grounded to a nearby water-pipe. After a few adjustments
to the length of the antenna, I was off and running, and within a couple of months, managed to work
all the states and continents. (K5OVW and I couldn't operate on 20 meters at the same
time!)
It was during this time that a group formed to build activity on the ten meter band. Ten-Ten
International was born with the motto, "You have to make contact to get results." After working
10 members on ten, I was presented with the Ten-Ten International certificate number 5991 on
September 14, 1972. At that time, WB6LWW was President, and W6LRY was Secretary.
It was now the middle of October, 1972, and time to leave Austin. I said goodbye to the
military, and headed to Mississippi where I could seriously start to work on confirming 100 countries
to qualify for the DXCC award.
[BILOXI, MISSISSIPPI] By June, 1973, I
had 44 countries confirmed, and just moved into my first house where I could erect a tower. I
refused to buy an amplifier, and continued to run only 100 Watts output. (The 3 element beam at
forty feet sure helped, but those "Big Guns" made it difficult to work the rare ones.) By the
end of '73, I had confirmations from 61 countries, and to make a long story short, it took another
year and a half to finally confirm number 100. My DXCC is dated June 3, 1975.
 I did other things during the time I chased DX. I joined the YL
International SSB organization, and received member number 9420. I also worked many contests,
and managed to win First Place SSB-USA during the Michigan QSO Party in 1975, and First Place
CW-Mississippi QRP in the '76 Michigan QSO Party.
In addition, I got bit by the 2 meter bug, and built a Heathkit HW-202. That's about the time
the autopatch came on the scene, so it didn't take too long for me to convert an old telephone touch
pad for radio use. Talking on the telephone while driving around town was quite a thrill in
those days.
While living in Biloxi, I joined the Mississippi Coast Amateur Radio Association (MCARA), and served
as their Vice President in '76 and '77. I also had time to rebuild on old Hallicrafters
receiver, and you can see it on the far left of the black and white photo taken of the station in
'77.
It was March of '76 when I switched gears, and got interested in QRP work (under 5 Watts). I
bought another Heathkit (the HW-8), heated the soldering iron, and was soon on-the-air with this
great little rig. Now, I spent most of my operating time seeing just how little power was
required to maintain a contact. By August, I had worked 43 states running less then 3
Watts. My best contact was with Japan (JH1APK) on 15 meters running 1 watt. (That's about
6,907 miles per watt.)
 Running QRP continued to be my main
interest, so I joined QRP Amateur Radio Club International on May 11, 1977, and was issued the number
3904. After scanning notes in my log book, it appears that I sold all my HF gear in mid '77,
and bought the top-of-the-line QRP station available at that time; the Ten-Tec Argonaut. This
radio was a workhorse, and when five Watts wasn't enough, I just kicked in the matching 50 watt
amp. Yes, sometimes I needed a little more power to work a new country. I now had 127
countries confirmed.
1978 marked the beginning of a three year slowdown in my operating due to personal changes in my
life. My tower and beam came down in late May, and I moved to a couple different locations on
the Mississippi coast over the next few months. My antennas where not always the best, but I
managed to log eleven pages of contacts from apartments, and my QRP Worked All States total continued
to climb.
In October of '78, I moved back to Austin.
[AUSTIN, TEXAS] I continued to operate
occasionally from apartments until November, 1980 when I purchased my second house, and a year later,
I finally installed a 50' tower and 3 element beam. (A picture of the moonlit TH3JR beam is
below.) Up until then, I was using a 40 meter inverted-V with homemade open-wire feed-line, but
still managing to work DX. In November of '81, DXCC was at 142 countries confirmed.
 By September of '82, 166 countries
were confirmed, and my first computer was sending and receiving CW through a home-built
interface. (The Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer "CoCo" was really a Motorola design using a
6809 processor. I modified it to drive a monitor, and I added more memory.) Two months
later, I finished building an RTTY interface, and made my first teletype contact with WB0DWK.
Pictures can be seen to the right.
It's interesting to note that from September of '82 to November of 2000, no mention of country totals
is noted anywhere in my logs, so I guess you could say that my interest in pursuing additional DXCC
countries ended with the addition of a home computer to the shack.
 Nothing really changed in the shack over the next four years. I finally
purchased a new Yaesu FT-757GX in November of '86, but couldn't let loose of the Ten-Tec
workhorse. The Yaesu was nice, but the Argonaut seemed to have more punch at half the power, so
I continued to use it even on RTTY.
Oh yes, an Atari computer was purchased in March, '87. (It used the powerful Motorola 68000
processor, had 1 Meg of RAM, and two real disk drives. The disks were much better then
the cassette tape storage used with the TRS-80.) I also purchased an MFJ TNC. It replaced
my home-built interface on CW and RTTY, and it allowed me to work local 2 meter packet with an old
Ten-Tec hand-held rig.
 My log is filled with contest contacts, a few phone-patches, and a number of
general QSO's from '86 on. Many QSL cards were sent out, but nothing special is noted until
March, '91 when I purchased a Kenwood TR-751, and made my first satellite QSO with the "Robot" on
RS10. (It was QSO number 64 while the bird was over Florida.) It wasn't until February,
'92 that I started working through the packet satellites. I used a PacComm modem/MFJ-1278 TNC
combination, and was very active for about three years.
1995 signaled an end to my "Active Years." Operating took a nose-dive while undergoing more
personal changes in my life. I briefly moved into an apartment in '96, but quickly bought a new home
after a few months. However, I never fully regained my motivation to operate daily. I
made a few satellite contacts, and chased DX, but nothing like in past years. I still enjoyed
Amateur Radio, but I seemed to do more listening then anything else. Mainly because I was
always at the computer keyboard.
 For information on current activities, visit my "Site Map." There are
links at the top and bottom of every page.
73,
Joe (AJ8MH)
|
|
|
