doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com OT - any radio hams here?

if too far OT - pls remove

Hi
I've been playing with the idea for some time & have just bought myself a radio again after about 18 years off air!
(luckily have kept the licenses going!)
Getting long in the tooth and bored in the long evenings - so I thought that getting back into ham radio might be one way of keeping things going and have something interesting to do.
So, just bought myself an FT1000MP, made a dipole for 20m and strung it up - about a week ago.
That FT1000 is an amazing radio compared to my old IC735 (and earlier an FT902DM)
Some parts of the US seem to come in OK around late evening here (early eve in the US)
just wondering whether one could make a few contacts.
I'm in the Southeast of the UK and my dipole beams towards Central/North America (and the other way of course)

Gunter
GODKO and C6ADH

NRA Life 1974

I also enjoy the hobby, but I know of no shotgun nets.

Perhaps we can start one.

I thought about getting into it years ago....but that's about the time the internet took off.....so I went that way....But if we ever have a real world wide emergency natural or man made computers will be useless for communication.....

I was interested in it some 60 years ago and ready to take my novice test but was too shy to get on the airwaves so dropped that part...did a lot of SW listening (still do occasionally). I have an old Harvey-Wells TBS-50 transmitter and Zenith Trans-Oceanic (tube type) sitting above my computer to remind me of the "good old days".

My dad was a Ham. He had been a Novice when he was a kid. In the late fifties he spent two years in Thailand and the Phillipines, as part of the old ASA intercepting Red Chinese Army radio traffic.

Back in the seventies and eighties he was very active, always working some contest. After I moved out, the first thing he did was turn my bedroom into his radio shack.

He's been gone a while now, his call signs were N0DGE, and later AA0ME.

My Dad was a Ham; He got his license in 1929 at the age of 11 (K4xx)(4 digits). During my first tour in Vietnam 1966-67 all the Special Forces A camps were equipped with Collins KWM-2A SSB's and all of us commo guys bootlegged Ham call signs pretending to be "maritime mobile in the South China Sea" to call back to the states and have a ham patch us into the phone network.

I got my license in 1967 in Germany while with the 10th Special Forces Group between Vietnam tours - WB4IPW. (.-- -... ....- .. .--. .--) I built a Heathkit HW-100 Single Side-Band in 1969 upon return from my second tour in Vietnam. But let the license lapse when I was assigned overseas in 1973.

About 5 years ago I bought an AN/GRC-109, the 1948 CIA radio adopted by Special Forces in 1960 which I had trained on, and played around a bit using a fake call sign using CW (now sadly much slower that it once was). I recently donated it to a museum. But the memory is still there and my bug (automatic key) is still sitting by my chair in the family room.

If anyone is interested in reading about the AN/GRC-109 here is an article I wrote last year for a Special Forces Association newsletter - twin brother and I are on the front cover - picture taken 30 May 1968 at B-24 in Kontum.

http://specialforces78.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/0215-Sentinel-News.pdf

My dad was/is a ham; advanced class. I'm just a technician so limited on frequencies I can acces but still enjoy it. Back in the day, I'm sure it was "magic". In today's world of cell phones ham radio may seem a bit archaic. The nice thing is that if the grid ever goes down, hams still can communicate.

I operate mainly CW ("continuous wave" or Morse Code) as NN4CW. Built a handful of radios including an Elecraft K2 and a half dozen or so qrp CW rigs. Enjoyed AM dxing with crystal radios and homebrew tube radios. Haven't been on the air much, but will get around to it soon. Gil --... ...--
Operating CW contact with a Texan from Pelican Cay, Belize on a fishing trip. Radio is an Elecraft KX1 I built, a self-contained CW transceiver, battery powered putting out about 3 watts with battery power. I've worked the world with it.

Gene, I've read about the 109 over the years. Nice radio and highly collectible. I've messed around with paddles, never a "bug", the most difficult key to manage. I'm primarily a straight key man and my favorite key is the old U.S. Navy Flameproof. I've a small straight key collection including a Japanese key used in WWII and a couple of German war keys. The Japanese key was used in tanks and is surprisingly (at least to me) well-made. Gil
PS: There's an old story floating around that Johnny Cash while in the Air Force was a code listener assigned to monitor Soviet transmissions. He intercepted the first Soviet code transmission in CW announcing Stalin's death.
https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/08/0...-stalins-death/

Wow about Jonny Cash. Dad had a navy key from WWII. He was a radar officer on the cruiser Pensacola and was at Bikini (Pensacola was part of the blown up fleet). Unfortunately it was accidentally sold in a yard sale in my absence during one of our moves.

My Vietnam bug was identical to the one in the article (pictured below); it went in the same yard sale - I was "upset." Brother bought me another a few years ago. It is not the fully automatic one with both dit and dah automatic...only the dits and the speed can be regulated by the weights...easy to use once you get used to it. All the SF guys in VN used them.



The 109 could broadcast 2,000 miles but it put out 10-15 watts. During the final problem in Piscah Forest NC, in 1965 trying to communicate in the 80 meter band was just difficult...the hams would hear a faint signal with a strange call sign and come bombing in on top of us with 10,000 watts for a dx.