Amateur Radio

My Amateur Radio Adventures

Vibroplex Returns to Norcross, GA, 2011: Special Event Station N4V
Antique Wireless Association (AWA) 2010 Conference
Classic Rigs at the Dayton Hamvention from 2007.
Classic Rigs at the Dayton Hamvention from 2009.
Classic Rigs at the Dayton Hamvention from 2023.
A Visit to the Radio Society of Great Britain
Antique Splitdorf Crystal Radio. This little radio belonged to a friend of mine to whom it was given by a neighbor who said it belonged to her grandfather.
From a Tourist to a Visitor - a short account of my holiday visit to Cambridge, England. This appeared in the May 2011 issue of the Gwinnett Amateur Radio Society GARzette.

QRP Low Power Ham Radio

National HRO Receiver & the National Company : a collection of documents, photographs, and articles about the renowned National HRO receiver, the National Company, James Millen, Jim Lamb, Herbert Hoover, Jr., together with HRO coil charts in scalable vector format.

Articles

" A Little Power and a Very Nice Antenna," QRP Quarterly, Volume 62, Number 3 (July 2021), recounts my QRP operation from the 80-foot tall discone antenna at the Titan Missile Museum in Arizona. Copyright 2021, QRP Amateur Radio Club International.
" Paragon Paul and the 1921 Transatlantic Test" from The GARzette, The Official Newsletter of the Gwinnett Amateur Radio Society, December 2020 Volume 29, Issue 12. Only 99 years have elapsed since U. S. amateur signals first spanned the Atlantic. In the grand scheme of things, it wasn't that long ago....
" In the Footsteps of the Ancient Ones" from The GARzette, The Official Newsletter of the Gwinnett Amateur Radio Society, November 2020 Volume 29, Issue 11. In which I try my hand at grinding a World War II surplus FT-243 crystal up to a 40-meter frequency. The photos as this article appeared are practically microscopic. If you'd like to reprint this for your club newsletter, let me know and I can provide the larger format images for your own layout. Also, as printed the photos for figures 3 and 4 are swapped and don't match the captions.
" Vacuum Tubes' Last Stand" from The GARzette, The Official Newsletter of the Gwinnett Amateur Radio Society, September 2020 Volume 29, Issue 9. In 1959, RCA debued a radically new tube architecture, called the Nuvistor. Was this the tube division's desparate attempt to compete with the rapidly evolving transistor?
" Why the Sideband Conventions? The Rest of the Story..." from The GARzette, The Official Newsletter of the Gwinnett Amateur Radio Society, August 2020 Volume 29, Issue 8. Why do we use Lower Sideband (LSB) for 80-meters and 40-meters, but Upper Sideband (USB) for 20-meters & up? It boils down to a quirk of history -- and war surplus.
"The Internet is a Wonderful Thing!" from WorldRadio, February, 2008. This story follows a trail that began with my 2007 visit to the RSGB and how chasing some details of a TPTG transmitter owned by Barbara Dunn, G6YL, the first licensed female operator in the UK, led to a 70-year old QSO with a ham in Ohio.
"A Bit of Radio Row in Brooklyn?" from WorldRadio, December, 2008. This story touches on New York City's famed "Radio Row" and Leeds Radio, a survivor from the golden age of radio. The editor omitted my two footnotes. The first credited a quote from Walt Gezari, N2EEZ, describing Radio Row in its heyday: http://www.eham.net/articles/2910 The second footnote was for the Leeds Radio web site: http://www.leedsradio.com/

"Getting an 'Almost' Wrinkle Finish on Diecast Aluminum" from The QRP Quarterly, Winter 2008. There are lots of procedures for finishing diecast aluminum. I did a fair amount of research amongst the alternatives and settled on a pretty simple and straightforward way to get a great-looking finish for my Hi-mite 20 meter QRP rig.
"A Lost Dit of Vibroplex History" from QST, February 2009. This is the story of Edward F. "Buck" Buchanan, United Electrical Manufacturing, Horace G. Martin, a Wall Street crash, the little town of Norcross, and the rare Norcross Vibroplex bugs.
"Alfred Powell Morgan: the Eternal Boy Turns 120" from the ARRL online web site of 9 September 2009. The author of The Boys’ First Book of Radio and Electronics (and Second, Third, & Fourth) inspired many hams in the 20th Century; but there's more to Morgan than just the Boys' books.
In 1955, Larry Lighthouse and the publishers of General Electric G-E Ham News announced a contest for the development of creative crystal set receivers for use in case of national disaster. Of course, the disaster they most feared at the time was nuclear warfare between the United States and the Soviet Union. The contest was called Operation Crystal and here is a little article, "Crystal Radio to the Rescue," that appeared in The AWA Journal, the quarterly bulletin of the Antique Wireless Association, January 2010, Volume 51, Number 1. The original issues of G-E Ham News concerning the contest also may be found on my web site here.
I spent a few months scanning every single issue of G-E Ham News for posting elsewhere on my web site and in the process developed an appreciation and affection for the little magazine. My tribute to Lighthouse Larry appeared as "Look What Lighthouse Larry has this Month" in the QCWA Journal, Fall 2010, Volume 59, Number 3.
In October, 2009, I visited the Canadian National Warplane Heritage Museum. From that visit came the little article, "Flying Classrooms - for radio operators", that appeared in the newsletter of my local club. The museum has a Fleet Fort Model 60K which was a training aircraft for radio operators. That little aircraft and the airmen who trained in it deserve remembrance.
How about a bit of fiction? In 2008 I visited a vintage bookshop near Northwestern University. There I found a stack of 1920s QST magazines and I purchased a few. The cover story for one issue concerned Don Mix, 1TS, and the 1923 arctic voyage of the schooner Bowdoin. Now it's a radio ghost story. This file is from my club newsletter, the October 2010 issue of the GARzette. Whiskey November Papa: A Tale for Halloween
I guess there's something about Halloween that turns me into a fiction writer. We have one more setting...
Back to the Future with the AWA relates my attendance at the 2010 conference of the Antique Wireless Association (AWA) in Rochester, NY, and how a convention such as that of the AWA could serve as a model for ordinary hamfests as the traditional flea-market trade increasingly moves to the Internet. This appeared in the November 2010, Volume 66, Number 11, issue of CQ magazine and is copyright 2010, CQ Communications, Inc.
Another article came out of my trip to the AWA 2010 conference. This one, "Crystal Radios are Like Beer," focuses, naturally, on a small selection of crystal radios that I came across. The article appeared in The Xtal Set Society Newsletter, Volume 20, No. 6 (November 2010) and is copyright 2010, The Xtal Set Society.
"The National HRO Receiver - A Historical Perspective" is my tribute to James J. Lamb, W1CEI; James Millen, W1HRX; Herbert Hoover, Jr., W6ZH; and the team of engineers who created the first single-signal receiver in 1932 and ultimately the National HRO. The article appeared in QST, January, 2010 (Volume 95, Number 1).
In April, 2011, I visited the Imperial War Museum at RAF Duxford, just south of Cambridge, England. While there I came upon the Duxford Radio Society. CW Opens Doors is a little story of this adventure! This article appeared in the QCWA Journal, Fall 2011 (Volume 60, Number 3).

Publications of historical importance rescued from obscurity and posted on the web for the benefit of all hamkind.

Museum Ships on the Air

2009: USS Alabama (BB60)

Here is a 55 minute presentation that I did for the 2021 QSO Today Virtual Ham Expo:

Amateur Radio

1921 Transatlantic Tests: The Shortwave Revolution