How I became a Amateur Radio 'Ham' Operator

By the forth grade I became aware that I was fascinated by the way electricity could "flow" though wires and be made to do great things, even transmit sound and pictures through the "air". During the fifth and six grades I spent what time I could reading books about electronics at the Public Library. I can remember the librarian reminding me that the children's books were kept on the other side of the library and that I was in the adult section. I was however, unable to find any books on electronic theory in the children's area.

Being encouraged by my uncle, who himself has been a licensed ham (W6NDE) since the 1930's, I learned Morse Code. Then using a noisey phonograph record I practiced sending and receiving Morse code at the 5 w.p.m. rate required for passing the Novice exam.

I was first licensed by the F.C.C. in 1960 at the age of 13 as WV6QGB. The "V" in the call sign at that time indicated a Novice class license.

You always remember the thrill of your first jittery on the air contact and mine was no exception. I practiced the code and learned more theory, then took the General class exam about 6 months later and was given the call sign WA6QGB which I still hold today.

Over the years I have owned factory built equipment both transmitters and receivers, and I've assembled kits, but the most fun for me is designing and building my own 'rigs'. Of course, getting them to work the way you want is really the challange! While learning electronics in school, I thought that the theory seemed nice, clean and exact. I could simply solve a few equations to perhaps find the correct inductance or capacitance for a certain circuit design, solder in the correct parts, and presto a working circuit. Of course that was in an ideal world. I soon found the 'real world' when I discovered that components with the same values that the equations called for were unavailable! This taught me how to 'juggle' the values until I arrived at a standard part values and that was not all. There is a thing called "stray" capacitance and "stray" inductance and of course good ole Murphys Law which states "any well designed amplifier will of course turn into an oscillator". In other words, all that math is only a starting point in any circuit design after that it's more art than science.

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