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

My Dad was a ham and worked the world for many years. I helped him build his multi-band dipole out of the old very stiff steel telephone wire with the insulation stripped off it. We soldered the connections and strung it up between two old pecan trees so that it stretched over his house, and the center was above the den where he ran the coax down through a waterproof elbow fitting in the roof. He also later put up a tower with a rotator and beam antenna, but I cannot remember the band.

Dad was N4VSN. Funny how I remember his call sign, he's been gone nearly 15 years now. I kept his equipment for many years, but finally sold it to an old guy that wanted it.

SRH

The California Historical Radio Society has an active ham radio contingent. Californiahistoricalradio.com

I spent 6 years in the Army ASA unit, deciphering coded radio traffic. Before my release back to civilian life, I was sent to a program to erase everything I had learned.

Well, who knows - I might have met a few of you (or your fathers) at Rhein Main airbase in abt 1968-1970 when I worked at Frankfurt Airport as a Flight Dispatcher for Seaboard World Airlines on DC-8's - we used to do the MAC flights!
I got into ham radio by a roundabout way - when I was called up to the (then just established after the war!) german military service at the end of 1966 they stuck me into the signals corps (although I had expressed a preference for the airforce - even willing to sign on for 12 years!) - we were listening to the Russians in East Germany and triangulating their stations (I'm sure that must now be off the 'secret' list? - I had to sign a doc to that effect - well, if not - I'm just a couple of years off from my inevitable demise - so I don't give a - what was it again?)
Anyway, they trained us on morse code to the russian military standard, which was about 175 or 35 wpm!
So that was pretty good at the time - when I got back to civilian life I met someone who became a good friend & who happened to be a radio ham! - he got me into it!
Have beeninterested in radio comms ever since but only got my licence in 1983 when I was living in Nassau, Bahamas.
Still have the callsign - C6ADH and got my UK callsign G0DKO in 1986.
Have been off air since abt 1999 when the computer stuff came in seriously - thought that it would kill ham radio -
now getting old and wanting to have something to do in the long evenings, bought myself another radio and went back on the bands - only a couple of weeks ago - amazed that it seems busier than I remember the bands being all that time ago!
So, there we are- it relieves my boredom in the long evenings and keeps me from writing long, boring comments on this shooting forum hehe
Gunter G0DKO / C6ADH
NRA Life 1974

Second generation amateur here.

Played digital modes and satellite long ago. QSL from Ron Parise, WA4SIR, and SS Columbia on 2M packet. I was one of the most northerly stations to copy him.

Now, I'm just an old 75M rag chewer. Same old goat stories over and over. Our local group is one of the 'good' ones, and quite a varied bunch.

We do talk guns, many hunters around here. Mostly deer hunters although I did a couple times attend a shooting preserve with a fellow I met on 10M. He had a wirehair, and shot a Merkel.

Amateur radio has a strong overlap with aviation, and the firearms enthusiasts I've met on the air tend to be the technical minded types. One guy regales me with M1 Garand shooting, and another is a 308 match shooter.

Gunter, if you want to PM me perhaps we can meet on 20M SSB some morning. I can run a cool kW to a low dipole, it should work to the UK starting at 1100 UTC or so this time of year.

I'll look you up on QRZ.com tomorrow when I have the time.

OM (hamspeak for "old man", in this case, "old men" for the non-hams),
If any of you think doubleguns, especially SXS's are on the way out, CW is going obsolete faster joining Latin as a dead language. With only 40 characters, CW is truly a language of its own. Gunter, Gene, Shotgunjones, these are fascinating stories, especially the ones relating to military or intelligence services. That old �boatanchor� Collins is some radio, Gene, and is still highly sought after by collectors and operators. Shotgunjones, my old buddy, N2KZ, summers in the UP and participates in the Old Goats net on 75 meters I believe. Karl was my on air code mentor-buddy when I first went on the air 14 years ago. Back then, CW was required to be a ham on all bands. Karl and I communicated during grey line (dawn) in CW when "skip" propagation would carry my low power signals 5-10 watts from my Elecraft K2 from Georgia to NY. We did this until my proficiency in sending and receiving was about 18 wpm. Oldtimers cringed at the speed requirement being reduced from 15 wpm to 5 wpm to obtain a general license. I was one of those hams who got in under the 5 wpm bar. My Navy Flameproof straight keys were made by JH Brunnel and Bendix for the USN which later sold the keys to the Mexican railroad which still communicated via CW through the 1970s and even later into the 1980s if memory serves. They had a stockpile in NY which were owned by a former employee whose son owned the successor corporation. I bought several from him and they were still in the old canvas covered sealed copper foil pouches. I have one still in the pouch unopened.
Gene, I believe the "leg key" depicted in your excellent article is the old J-38 which is often copied and sold by others. Lots of hams cut their CW teeth on it. Here are some of my keys that I mentioned. A Bendix Navy Flameproof is on the board. Nearest it is a South African Special Forces key. The Japanese key is easy to spot. The German keys from WWII are to its right. One of the Altoids boxes to the left atop my Belize license is a cw transceiver I made from surface mount kits with plug in band modules of 20, 30, 40 and 80 meters that are in the other box. The battery is on the lid. The radio with what appears to be a �sunburst� on the operating panel is the same kit, but made out of a diy graphite enclosure and the design is from a cut out neck tie. It was a contest radio I used when I participated in a �weight per contact� contest. I won a couple because of its extremely light weight. The battery was half the size of the one in the photo. I could run it at 3 watts for the one hour duration of the contest. These are fine little radios designed by a ham, KD1JV, who specializes in trail radios. These are his ATS3 series transceivers. With 14 volts in, the output was 5 watts. I worked Siberia with one of them from the Georgia coast. The Siberian contact was most likely a tribute to the sophistication of equipment and his antenna being able to hear my pipsqueak signals. I ran dipoles and doublets as antennas. Quality of the photo isn�t great, but it�ll have to do this a.m. Gil

Who would have thought it....double guns and CW. But then somehow most of the RT (Recon team) leaders in MACV SOG in Vietnam turned out to be commo guys. They were just smarter than the average.

Which means double gun shooters must be smarter too by definition.

Smart, but fast and loose with terminology at times.

'CW' is a mode. It's simply a carrier 'modulated' (which means to impress information on a radio signal) by the simple method of switching it on and off. The language most often used in the switching is International Morse Code.

Morse is far from dead, and never will disappear as long as there are radio amateurs interested in communication for communications sake. Reasons: efficiency, and simplicity.

I'm in the process of setting up a schedule with G0DKO. If this becomes a regular thing, I'll post a frequency and a time. It will be HF sideband. No need for Morse!

GLS: I looked up N2KZ on QRZ. Quite the QRP op. He mentions Bad Axe, which is in Michigan's 'thumb' where, when I was a kid, there were pheasants.

I knew I shouldn't have read this thread. Now I want to get back into Ham Radio too. I've been off the air for several years after my radio bit the dust. At the time I didn't think I could afford to replace it. I have kept up my license though.

Most of my QSOs were on 2m so not a lot of HF experience though I am licensed for it. My in-laws have expressed some interest in radio as a secondary means of communication in an emergency so I may get into the HF bands to talk to them.

Stephen
KF4DBA

Gene, it may be as simple as that we are stuck in the past.
BTW, a few years ago I found and bought off Ebay a fully spooled mile of military commo wire on the RL/159 cable spool. I have the hang tag somewhere around here. I�ve used it in some antenna applications as a feedline for receiving DXing antennas matching impedance with a diy balun. It's hard to use up a mile of it and I've barely dented the spool.
Current project is the assembly of a low power 40 meter SSB radio designed by an Indian Ham Ashkar Farhan a genius designer who designed an affordable radio to be built by villagers and poorer folks in India with roughly $16 costs in parts on today�s market. Rather than use ferrite toroids for inductors on his original design, he substituted wire wrapped rubber washers. The electronic boards of the kit are fully assembled and tested by village women in India. The only soldering is power connectors, antenna, earphone jacks, etc. It�s a great deal. If you looking to kill time the kit as delivered is $59 from India. Since introducing the kit, over 5,000 have been sold. It comes straight SSB, but is easily hackable to add CW with a change in code programming. The transmitter puts out 7 watts but can be raised to 20 watts by feeding it 25 volts. http://www.hfsigs.com/

73 Gil