Lincoln County Amateur Radio Club

I’m Much Too Young to Feel This Damn Old (and forgetful)

If I remember correctly (and I often times don’t) this title belongs to a Garth Brooks song. Growing up in Taft and living next door to my maternal grandparents I formed a special bond with them and developed a special understanding of old folks. Grandma was the quiet one with strong meaningful advice. Grandpa was the storyteller and adventurer but also very wise and “smart as a whip”. He, like many young folks of his time, had only an eighth grade education but built a successful life and complicated businesses with that knowledge. Gramps built one of (according to him not one but “the”) highest logging railroad trestles in the U.S.. Quite an engineering feat for an eighth grade education. I saw the trestle in the 1970’s and it was an impressive structure.

As a young man Grandpa accepted a money belt from his wealthy stepbrother A.S. Kerry and went “North to Alaska” and the Klondike gold rush. There he built a boarding house/hotel/store on the Whitehorse River, he then built a steam boat to haul miners and their materials back and forth. After a couple of years work he brought a trunk of gold back to his stepbrother who became an even wealthier member of Seattle society. Kerry Park in Seattle is named after his brother A.S. Kerry.

My intent was not to tell the family history but to establish that in 1950 when I was starting the first grade in Mrs. Morrow’s class in Taft my Grandfather was 71. I like most children had no ability to determine adults age. They were simply adults some older, some not so old. I also had no appreciation for the toll that years take on an individual. Now being almost a decade older than what my Grandfather was at that time, I realize and appreciate many of the things about my Grandparents.

Asking myself things such as, “What IS his name?” “Where did I put the …?” “Did I solder that to pin four or five?” “What was the frequency they said they were moving to?” I like to tell myself that I’m as sharp as I used to be … just a little slower getting to that sharpness.

One thing my family taught me was patience. I didn’t think they were teaching me to be patient, I just thought they were making me wait. Lessons were sometimes harsh. Like when I was in the seventh grade and my birthday was approaching (as in two or three weeks away approaching). For probably the fiftieth time that week I asked, “What am I getting for my Birthday, Mom?” Mom turned away from me, took a box off the shelf and opened it handing me a pair of shoe skates. “Happy Birthday son. Your birthday is going to be very quiet and unsurprising now.”

Wow! Not what I wanted to happen. Did I learn a lesson in patience!

Some things a person must wait for. As a young adult you wish you were older, then you are older and you wonder why all of a sudden you have all these responsibilities and problems.

As a ham radio operator patience breeds success. As you tune across the frequency take a moment to realize all the things that need to align for you to hear that other station. Your radio, feed-line and antenna need to be working properly and efficiently. The atmosphere needs to be providing good propagation. The other station needs to be transmitting and its signal needs to be of a quality your station can function with.

Often times we tune quickly across the frequency and our equipment doesn’t have the ability to process the signals that are there. Or they are just beginning to transmit but you have already moved “off-frequency”. Sometimes being the “tortoise” is better than being the “hare”.

Listen and copy the information the station may give out: call sign, frequency, location, power, name, special status. Nothing identifies a “Lid” (ham slang for poor operator) more than after giving a glowing signal report asking two or three times for clarification of their call sign. If they are truly registering “59” that means they have a strong signal and are completely understandable.

I know, in the contest world, all signal reports are “59”. Many hams are offended by that but that is the accepted protocol for that group. It tends to bleed into other ham activities which lessens the value of signal reports which I use to assess the condition of my station.

Another example of ham patience is waiting for your turn which is part of the mantra “listen first then speak”. If a station is “answering by the numbers” they are breaking responses into the ten districts. So if they are taking “7s” and you are a “6” you need to wait through 8, 9, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. If you can’t wait go to another frequency and come back. If you time it right you will show up as they are taking “6s”.

A station I found of 20 meters was calling “CQ, CQ, CQ, CQ 20 meters. This is K7— calling CQ. CQ, CQ, CQ. CQ 20 meters. This is K7— calling CQ. CQ, CQ, CQ …….. On and on and on I timed him for close to three minutes before he paused for ten seconds and started his constant calling once again. A little patience and someone might have been able to respond to his CQ.

So, when Gramps said, “I’ll take you with me when I go to the Post Office and give you a nickel for some candy,” that was on his schedule not mine. That nickel candy had to wait an hour or two and maybe he might have forgotten the offer. I didn’t understand the dynamics when I was young but I sure do now!

One of my friends sent me a post where the older person was in the middle of the stairs and was asking, “now was I going up to the bathroom or down the the living room?” At this time in my life, I can relate.

I ask myself, “is this writer’s block I’m going through …. or is it getting older and older and older.

73, Chuck W7CRG

          I just realized that I had not completed, corrected nor posted the September blog. My life has been full of spontaneous occurrences these last two to three months so I am not surprised.  I will try to stay on track and get this article to press. 

          The older I get, the more often I think back to my growing up in the 1950’s and 60’s.  I was doing my weekly shopping for groceries and I passed by a “special” in the ice cream freezer.  Drumsticks, a little treat of ice cream in a cone dipped in chocolate with a sprinkle of nuts on the top.  As a child if I was “good” my grandpa would buy me one.  It was a special deal because a drumstick was 10 cents whereas a the normal treat such as a fudge bar was a nickel.

          Now I realize in today’s world most people will not even bother to stop and pick up a dime off the sidewalk let alone a nickel!  But in those days Abe Abrams store had a two foot display of penny candy and we young’uns would spend minutes trying to decide between the bubble gum, the root beer barrel, the wax bottle with sugary liquid inside or the caramel piece of candy. Since we had a nickel to spend and wanted to get the most sugar and tooth decay for our money!

          Getting back to the  Drumsticks, realizing that everything seems larger to a child, I could not believe that the  Drumsticks I took home were anywhere near the size I devoured as a kid!  Our cars have gotten smaller, the  loaf of bread has more “holes” in it, and, yes, our radios no longer need a manly man to move it from one place to another.

          A year or so ago I was “rummaging” under the stairs and found a radio I stashed there many years ago.  It had to be many years ago because in my present state I could barely move it and I almost had to call the EMTs to extricate me out from under the stairs.  This wonderful example of post-WWII technology could put out a signal on 40 through 10 meters.  To change from one band to another, all you had to do was put a different set of coils in and re-tune it for the new band.  It probably took 15 minutes to go from one band to another!

          It was a loving creation of some ham long since a silent key.  It was great for the time and showed that a ham could build his own rig including winding the necessary coils!  I didn’t have the space to display it nor the courage to try and restore it and I’m sure that the folks that re-cycle electronics where both puzzled and herniated by my “donation” of copper, aluminum  and steel to their efforts.

          The move to smaller items is not only frustrating at the grocery store but it frustrates those of us who used to take pride in fixing that radio that suddenly developed a strange problem.  I used to open the case and look for components that now were more black carbon than component.  Then the process of desoldering and start replacing things with new components.  That is no longer the case.  But to be fair, if I look under the hood of my car it in no way resembles what was under the hood of that 1968 Mustang GT that I now wish I had not traded it in on a Mazda station wagon that the babies and German shepherd could fit in.

          So I have moved from ice cream Drumsticks to radios to Mustangs with a degree of smoothness that only I can see.   Sorry about that.  Since this is a blog for amateur radio I will try to seamlessly move back to that subject.

          That fast back Mustang was the reluctant recipient of a Heath kit CB.  I say reluctant because there was no way that a relatively large rectangular box was going to conveniently fix under the dash and in front of the 4-speed transmission!  After it sliding down by the foot pedals once too often as I turned “smoothly” through a corner, I gave up on mounting a CB in my car.  I got the additional benefit of getting rid of that 102 inch whip antenna on the rear bumper!  When I came to a stop I no longer looked like Broderick Crawford of “Highway Patrol” with that long stainless steel whip swishing back and forth for 15 seconds after his car slid to a stop at the scene  of the crime.  (For you young ones, that was a TV show before color TV and he was the head cop driving a sporty 1957 Dodge 4-door with a long whip antenna on the rear fender.)

          Now-a-days, we have small radios that can be mounted on a device that sets in the coffee cup holder and sticks up into the driver’s and passenger’s personal space.  Back in the “olden days” cars didn’t have cup holders and we were left to our own devices to travel with minimal spills and scaldings resulting from our cups of coffee set in various places in the car.

          Or if that isn’t your cup of tea, some radios now come with a detachable face plate and you can mount the radio under a seat or some other “convenient” spot where a grandson with size 14 feet can’t kick at it as he rides in the rear seat.  A “selling” point seems to be if a thief breaks into your car and steals the radio he only gets a useless face plate.  Leaving you with a “useless” radio unless you can find the thief selling your face plate on Craig’s List or buy a new face plate from the manufacturer  for a modestly exorbitant price.

          But, no matter the tongue-in-cheek comments, today’s radios are a far cry from the radios of yesteryear.  I remember my uncle Bob who first got me interested in radio and electronics.  He was a Boeing Electrical Engineer and a truly creative ham.  Loved to build his own equipment.  Boeing sent him back to the east coast for a couple of years.  Returning to Seattle he stopped at our house in Taft.  The 1954 Chevy 4-door sported a 10 meter whip antenna, (you guessed it, Broderick Crawford would have been jealous) a transmitter he built which was crystal controlled and the crystals were changed by an old dial phone (the latest 1950’s technology).  All of this was conveniently located on the floor in front of the passenger’s seat.  I’m sure my aunt OKed that installation as she was forced to travel with her feet resting on a large, sharp cornered, humming metal box …. LOL.

          So today’s mobile installations are cleaner and less of an infringement on the people in the vehicle.  Such wondrous inventions like magnetic antenna bases and mounts that attach to everything from the window to the trunk edge have meant that antennas can be mounted without putting holes in the roof or the fender.  (“Charles, why is water dripping on me from the roof  liner?” asks my wife.  Or the car salesman remarking, “you know that hole in the roof will mean I can only offer you $X for your trade-in?”)

          Yes, progress can mean a smaller ice cream Drumstick that costs more for one than the whole box did when you were a kid.   It can mean your radio works better and has more abilities (many of which you don’t fully understand).  You can use your vehicle for your hobby and your family with little or no compromise.  The bad side is the thief is far more difficult to detect as he/she has your radio in their coat pocket and they are not in the ER for a possible hernia from carrying it away from your vehicle.

          All things have pros and cons to them.  Weigh those and make your best choice.  Remember, what is right for Charlie may not be right for you.  You can have a mobile installation by simply taking your handheld with  you in the car.  It might even fit in the cup holder with the 18 inch antenna merrily waving back and forth between you and your passenger.  If you invest in a headset (headset has earphones AND a microphone) you can communicate with both hands on the steering wheel thus eliminating possible crashes or tickets.

          I will stop before my meandering prose gets too far afield.  Enjoy the fall weather and remember it is more fun to operate your radio than it is to rake leaves.  Let the winter winds blow those leaves into the neighbor’s yard.

73, Chuck  W7CRG