ON BEING A NOVICE
The amateur radio hobby has meant a great deal to me over the years. I have been many places and made many friends worldwide over the years. It all started for me with the Novice license granted to KN2JSP in 1954.
I had tinkered with radios by taking them apart and putting them back together. Trying to learn how and why they worked. I had an uncle who worked for Western Electric, then a part of the Bell system. He would bring me surplus parts and I would try to make something from the pile of discards.
In 1953 while in High School in Park Ridge, New Jersey I became close to a fellow classmate who had an amateur radio license. He was Phil K2EPD. Phil had a Globe King transmitter and a National NC-183D receiver that I used to drool over. He was also quite good with morse code and an excellent technician as well. I don’t know why but he encouraged me to pursue the license. In my circle of friends in school there were a number of licensed hams and those like me who were going down that path. We became a pretty tight group.
The first hurdle was to learn the code. We had to do 5 wpm in those days. For the code test we had to send and receive (no multiple choice either) so no faking it there. I did not own a receiver with a bfo so my method of trying to listen and copy cw was to tune in a station sending code and hope that there was a heterodyne so that a tone was audible. I did this with our floor console Emerson all band radio.
Well, when Phil found out how I was trying to learn code he loaned me his Instructograph. This was a device that put out cw by reading paper tape with holes in it for the dots and dashes. You hand cranked it, hooked up a battery and speaker and you could copy code at whatever speed you wanted. What a device! Thanks to this machine and Phil I passed my test.
Then came the waiting. There were no instant licenses in those days. Days turned to weeks and I would be checking the mailbox daily for what to me was a most important delivery of my life. Finally it came. KN2JSP. I was ready to go on the air.
By this time I had built a Heathkit AT-1 transmitter. This used a 6L6 in the final to put out about 12 watts. An antenna in our backyard was going to be difficult but I did manage to put up an 80/40 meter dipole. It had an insulator at the end of the 40 meter section so I could jumper around it for the 80 meter portion. This was no problem since the antenna was 5 feet off the ground. But who knew better.
I told my mom that I needed a receiver. I had some money saved but needed a loan. She said she would finance it so off we went to Manny, Mo, and Jack where I bought my Hallicrafters S38C. It was $49.95. I made payments to mom but later found out that she had paid cash for the receiver and I was just learning an early lesson in economics.
Well, antenna, transmitter and receiver in place I strapped on the bakelite head crusher headphones. I selected one of my total of 3 crystals. Yes, we were crystal controlled as Novices. Later on we learned how to use Ajax cleanser and pencil leads to change our frequency but for now we were tethered to a crystal. Now in those days you had to log everything. Or were supposed to. I logged CQ after CQ with no takers. I still have the logbook and chuckle when I read in the comments section “I think he heard me” and “wow”. Finally I called Phil and had my first sked and contact with a station 4 miles away. Non-the less it was still a thrill.
In those days we had a year to upgrade or loose the Novice ticket. This was a daunting task for now we had to go from 5 wpm to 13 wpm in code and learn a lot more theory. I guess that is why the novice license was so good to many of us from that era. By getting on the air and associating with others we learned enough to get that General ticket. Still there was never such a thrilling day when that envelope was in the box from the FCC with the license for KN2JSP.
