41.519°N. 112.022° W. - AT THE NORTH EDGE OF THE GREAT SALT LAKE
 

 (Lots of rambling and nostalgia, BEWARE !)  ......

Introduction:

I was licensed first in 1960 as both a technician K9FMR and novice KN9FMR. Since I didn't want anything to do with Morse code (then) , I opted to use the tech license with a microphone. As I result, I fell in love with six meters and two meters. In the 1960's it was different than today. Most all operation was AM and 2 meter FM repeaters had not raised their ugly heads! Frankly..... I don't know why I even bothered to attain the "Extra Class" license as 95% of my activity is on six meters and the other 5% on 160 meters. As my friends are aware.... Ron rambles on and on about the "good old day" on six meters and here I go again. It's quite a band.

Early Six meter memories:

My first introduction to six meters was six meter mobile (Amplitude Modulation) by Earl, K9SOO who was my true "Elmer". Earl used to pick me up when I was a teenager and drive me to the local radio club ham radio classes in Galesburg, Illinois. His mobile rig had tubes and the plate high voltage was created by a dynamotor which was a 12 volt d.c. motor on a common shaft with a high voltage generator. You could hear the whine of the dynamotor even though it was mounted in the trunk of the car. As I write, I realize just how old I really am (58) because many hams today have never used tubes at all ! THAT IS A SCARY thought !

My father let me cash in a U.S. Savings bond that my grandmother had willed me to buy a brand new Hammarlund HQ-110 receiver. It had ten tubes and covered 160 through six meters. It was so unstable that I would have to warm it up 30 minutes early. That must be why Hammarlund offered an optional timer to turn the rig on in advance. When my ticket arrived I finally bugged my Dad to buy me a Hallicrafters HT-40 transmitter. This ran around 50 watts output on either CW or AM, 80 through 6 meters. I can remember the thrill of my first QSO ever with K9UYV because my transmitter didn't work ! The tube of the audio stage was damaged during transit. After a bit of trouble-shooting, repair and the help of the telephone, I made my first "modulated" QSO. This fulfilled a life's dream as a SWL (short wave listener). In central Illinois we had a local net called the "kW Net" which met weekly on 50.55 MHz. We would have 10-20 locals check in. This was years before 2 meter repeaters.

The locals kept telling me about missing the great sunspot cycle which had peaked in 1958. I NEVER believed the local hams about talking with Africa on six meters until I actually saw their confirming QSL cards. Imagine doing this with 50 watts and a 5 element yagi.

True Duplex Operation

One of the local hams said "let's try duplex."  I said, ok, but what is duplex? I was told if we got above 52 MHz, we could turn our transmitters on the same time we were receiving, thus we could carry on a QSO just like a telephone. The only trick was to reduce your power and find a frequency that didn't completely overload the front-end of your receiver while transmitting. It was a bit complicated to coordinate our transmit/receive frequencies, but we did it a number of times. Looking back, I don't know if that mode was legal or not.

Light Bulb Dummy Load

A discovered that a 50 watt light bulb made quite a nice dummy load for my transmitter.  The transmitter would light it up quite well, except I needed to watch what I was saying because the light bulb also radiated quite well to the local hams!

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First Six meter Es openings

The band would suddenly "pop open" to the East coast from Illinois. I could work stations in New England as easily as local hams. The pattern of the sporadic E openings from the Midwest oftentimes followed the pattern:  first hearing New England then we would hear stations further south, down the coast to Florida. Sometimes we would then hear the deep south and then Texas. Infrequently we would then hear to the west: Kansas and Colorado and then sometimes it would move on around to the Dakotas. Very infrequently we would get double hop (Es I assume) to Utah, Montana and California. This was all during the end of the Solar Cycle (which had peaked in 1958), around 1960-1964. This was very exciting with the band open for as long as 24 hours straight. I was able to confirm all states except for Montana, Alaska and Hawaii with just 25 watts to a 5 element beam, all "carrier control" (grid modulated) Amplitude Modulation.

Gold Nickel Silver

A ninth district call with a suffix "GNS" (gold nickel silver) qso'd with me regularly until I built a DSB (double side band) transmitter.  This guy vowed (and swore) that sideband would NEVER replace AM on any band, particularly six meters, and that he personally would never go to another mode!  The DSB transmitter I built had a pair of 5763 tubes in a balanced modulator final that suppressed the carrier.   I could not afford a filter to remove the lower sideband, but eight of us who built these rigs had a lot of fun with our five watts to the antenna. 

TVI

Six meters and a weak signal area channel 2 TV are not very compatible.  I got a phone call that went like this.  Ring-Ring  Hello.  "Are you radio station K9FMR?"  Yes I am.  "Well, you are messing up my TV and I want it stopped RIGHT NOW!  I'm a city cop, and a ham on the police force told me who you were, and you've got to do something about my TV!"  Well...Mr. Policeman lived four blocks away from my house, but I was really messing up his TV.  I went to his house, installed a 1/4 wavelength  (54 inch) twin-lead trap, parallel to his TV line coming into the house.  He (and I) never thought it would work, but I never heard from him again.  I was only 15, and was scared to death when I went to his house.  Years later, neighbors told me that I had interfered with their televisions for years, but simply adjusting the fine tuning control often got rid of my interference.