Whiskey Six Fifty Years! (First licensed Nov. 1952!)

Update February 2009: Look for F/W6FY on the air one day soon.  We now live in Paris, France - the only station in the 4th Arrondissment (Le Marais, two blocks from the Seine, four from Notre Dame).  We expect to be here a couple years. 

F6GOX, Laurent, is helping me put up a vertical for 40 and 20 on the roof of this 7 story building in the middle of Paris and get acquainted with the Parisian hams. 

I'll soon be running 100 watts with an ICOM 706 which I picked up after selling my TS-950 in LA.  Now the only problem is finding a good ground - and the time to get on the air.  See you on 40 or 20, propagation allowing!  I'll try to post a photo of my operating position here in Paris -- it's going to be from the kitchen - the only possible entry point for the antenna feedline, which we have to hide as it drops from the roof to our second story apartment.  (Paris laws forbid any antenna wires in the front of these historical buildings -- ours is from the 1700s, I think.  But French law ALLOWS hams to have antennas pretty much anywhere!  No petitioning the city fathers - or the apartment neighbors - for permission, it's already written into the law!  Very nice! )

A little history:

I was raised in a farm town in southern Illinois, and passed the Novice test while I was still age 9, but the official license didn't arrive from the FCC until just after I turned 10, which made me miss being the only 9-year old ham in the country by a month. Frustrating!

As KN9CNC, I worked 40 and 80 CW in the Novice bands with two crystals and a couple dipoles. By my teens (in the above photo) the first International Geophysical Year (1957-58) coincided with the highest sunspot numbers in memory to open up the world to this Midwestern kid, so I ignored homework for a couple years, choosing to run traffic and phone patches for stations like KC4AAA and KC4USA in the Antarctic. What a rush!

The rig in the 1957 photo above is a DX-100 and an old military surplus BC-348H receiver. It took me three months to build the DX-100, and three months (and a couple good Elmers) to debug it and get it on the air!

Soon I was studying engineering at university, and working as an engineer and cameraman at a St. Louis television station. My career has taken me to the CBS Network in New York and ABC-Los Angeles...places I'd never have dreamed of working had it not been for the skills learned through Ham Radio. Other calls include W2GGV in New York City during the late '60s and '70s.

For this kid from a small Midwestern town, Amateur Radio truly opened my ears -- and mind -- to the world.