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jelliott@stlnet.comThe term “ham” for amateur radio operator has been around for many decades, but no one knows for sure of its origin. Hams are prohibited from charging for communications they provide. Ham radio is therefor a hobby. But many people like myself moved on to make electronics their profession. But, like myself, many retained an interest in being Hams.
Ham Radio began before World War I, soon after the invention of radio. The first tansmitters were nothing but spark generators. If you have ever noticed the sound of a car’s ignition in your radio or TV, you are hearing a spark transmitter. Some Hams started with Ford Motel T spark coils as their transmitter. Just hook it to a piece of wire and you were on the air. Transmitters later incorporated vacuum tubes and now transistors to amplify a signal from an oscillator. The first receivers were coherers. It was discovered that loose iron filings would bunch up, or cohere if a radio frequency signal was applied to it. A battery and a bell could be connected to the coherer so that the bell would ring when the radio signal was present. Next it was found that lead crystals would act as a one way switch or rectifier if a radio signal was applied. By this time, it was known that a coil of wire and parallel metal plates acted as a resonate circuit to make it possible to select a particular frequency to listen to. The antenna picked up many signals, the coil and capacitor (the metal plates) selected the desired frequency, such as KMOX or WIL or a specific ham transmitter. The selected frequency was passed thru the crystal via the cat whisker to the headphones. The crystal changed the high radio frequency to an audio frequency that you could hear. Receivers soon had vacuum tubes and later transistors to amplify the incoming signals for louder and more distant reception.
My first exposure to radio was listening to faint signals from WHO Des Moines in Lamoni Iowa, about 80 miles away. Members of the family would take turns listening to the crystal radio using the headphones and reporting on whether they heard anything. This was in the mid 1930’s. There were pretty good tube radios by that time but we couldn’t afford one till almost 1940.
About that time my brother Frank sold the Des Moines Tribune on the streets of Lamoni. When it was cold, he would spend time in the stores, and developed a friendship with Max Hammer who had the radio shop. Max had many junk radio trade ins in his basement that he gave to us. We loaded up a children’s wagon and took them home. Max wanted the nuts and bolts but we kept the rest. We were given plans for the “Two Tube Ocean Hopper” developed by Allied Radio in Chicago. It used 2 type 30 tubes. It needed a 2 volt storage battery for the filaments and a 45 volt B battery. This was a regenerative detector followed by one stage of audio amplification. The principle of the regenerative detector was to feed back some of the output of the first tube to the input. There was a control to adjust the amount of feedback. The trick was to increase the feedback till it was about ready to oscillate on its own. This generated a squeal like a PA that gets feedback from the speaker to the mike. But when you got it just right, it was very sensitive. It was, in fact an ocean hopper.
The big step was to buy a real ham radio. It was a Hallicrafter ”Sky Buddy”. It was very similar to the standard radio of the day with 5 tubes. One of the tubes was double purpose and served as a beat frequency oscillator. This BFO signal was mixed with an incoming Morse code signal to make audible tones. Without the BFO you only got clicks when you listened to a code signal. The Sky Buddy also had a band switch so that different coils could be selected to tune to short wave frequencies in addition to the broadcast band. This radio sold new for about $25, so we probably got it for $10 or $15. But that was a lot of money for two teen age boys. Both of us worked. I had a paper route and Frank and I had a milk route. We got $6 per month for the milk route for the two of us. We weeded soy bean fields for 25 cents an hour for the team.
But the Sky Buddy was worth all the effort. We soon found a ham station that was sending Morse code at slow rates to help learn it. This was W9BSP of Olathe Kansas. He also discussed technical matters like Ohms law or tube theory. Frank and I built a code practice oscillator using the ubiquitous type 30 tube. We would take turns sending and receiving to get up to 13 words per minute. We also studied the license manual guide to the Federal Communications Commission test.
Here I should give credit to our mentor, Stewart Wight, the only active Ham in town. He gave us advice and council. We marveled at his big rig which used mercury vapor rectifier tubes. As he talked, the current consumption would vary and the tubes would glow brightly or dim down between words. He operated quite near the broadcast band, and we could hear him overriding the radio stations.
Finally in February of 1941, we were ready. The closest FCC office was in Kansas City and we found a ride there with a local business man. Just getting there was exciting. We had never been that far from home and never to that size city. Then entering the FCC office in the Courthouse was a big deal. We took the code and theory test for the class B license, but we were not told the results because the test had to be sent to Washington for grading. About 2 months later we got a letter from the FCC asking us if we wanted separate station licenses or a single one for both of us. We assumed his meant we had passed but we were not sure. Finally the licenses came. I was W9TNI and Frank was W9TNH.
Dad had promised he would buy us a radio transmitter sold by Sears Roebuck (on credit). But he wouldn’t order it till the license was in hand. Then more waiting for it to arrive. It was a kit called a Stancor 10P. It had a 6J5 crystal oscillator and a 6L6 amplifier. Another 6L6 was used as a modulator with a carbon microphone. We assembled the kit and it worked! It put out about 20 watts. We had one crystal for 160 meters. Frank managed to make a few contacts but I never got up enough courage to use it before the war came on Dec 7th and Ham radio was forbidden.
During the war, I built some equipment for later use and outfitted a “ham shack”.. This small building had been a wash house about 12 by 10 feet.. I put linoleum on the floor, and covered the wall with sheets of insulation board. A small coal stove provided heat. I made a tower of 2 by 4’s about 30 feet tall for a long wire antenna. Soon after the war ended I was ready. The first band that we were allowed to use was 10 meters. I had built a transmitter for that band with a 6L6 tritet crystal oscillator and an 807 amplifier. The modulator was a pair of 6L6’s. The tritet used a 7 mc. crystal and multiplied it to 28 mc. I didn’t have a power meter but tested it with a light bulb. A 40 watt bulb glowed pretty brightly.
My first contact was with a ham in San Jose California. This was really exciting. The 10 meter band is a frequency that gives long range communications when sun spots are active. This means that this band is good for distant communication 3 or 4 years ever 11 years. The next excitement was a letter from the Federal Communications Commission. It cited me for transmitting outside the permitted band. I knew my crystal was a bit too low in frequency and I had tried to raise its frequency by grinding it. I used kitchen cleanser and a glass plate. The frequency of a crystal is a function of its thickness, so making it thinner raises the frequency. The problem was, I didn’t have an accurate way of measuring frequency so it was still too low after the grinding. I explained my situation in a letter to the FCC, promised to correct the problem and apparently satisfied them.
As more frequencies were released to hams, I wanted a bigger and more versatile rig. By this time a lot of equipment was available from WW2 surplus. I bought the tubes and transformers that had been used in a Navy transmitter. It included an 813 rf amplifier, two 811 tubes as modulators, and a modulation transformer, I built a variable frequency oscillator that allowed me to operate on any legal frequency without the use of crystals. This rig put out about 200 watts.
Sometime in 1946 there was a major ice storm in Iowa. Phone lines were down. I assisted other hams in providing emergency communications with individuals and also the power company. Several of us were honored by Iowa Southern Utilities for this service. This is just one example of the services provided by hams. Major earthquakes often cause loss of communications and hams fill in. Hams also provide communication to missionaries or foreign travelers. For a number of years I had regular schedules with RLDS missionaries in Peru and Argentina. I had a “phone patch” that let me connect my telephone line to the ham rig. I used it one time to allow a friend to talk to his wife who was visiting in Panama. Another time I made it possible for a person in Peru to talk to a St. Louis relative concerning his mother who was ill.
But most of ham radio is just routine talk, called “rag chewing”. Some people still build their own gear, but many use commercial equipment. I have found continued excitement as new technology becomes available. One example is communication by satellites. Hams have developed satellites that, when launched, act as a relay station. The frequencies used are too high to be reflected back to earth by the ionosphere. One satellite I used circled the earth every 90 minutes at an altitude of about 200 miles. I transmitted to it on 432 mc. and listened for the return signal on 144 mc. I talked to all continents with this system.
American hams are lucky that hams worldwide know enough English to carry on normal technical conversation. Strange coincidences happen. I was talking to a Brazilian ham and happened to mention that I had a friend who had worked for the FAA in Brazil. It happened that this ham worked in aviation and it turned out that he knew my friend Stew Wight. I recorded a short message for Stew from his friend in Brazil and mailed it to him.
Ham radio has been a good lifetime hobby. It led me to Engineering as a career, It has made maintenance and repair of computers possible. And it has been fun along the way.
Check the American Radio Relay League
web site for information on how to get into ham radio.
You might also want to check out The
Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation for ham satellites.
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