While it is technically possible (and frequently done) to make contacts with many other hams with limited antennas, low power, and home built equipment, many times more sophisticated equipment makes the job easier, or even makes the difference between making the contact and not making it.

My amplifier, an Alpha 87A. It is amazing. In addition to some very complex microprocessor controls to protect against antenna mismatch and non optimal circuit conditions, it will automatically change bands whenever it detects that the transmitter is on a band different than what the amplifier is. It detects the frequency and changes bands in less than a second.

Not all hams have an amplifier, maybe only 30% do, but it helps to have extra power available (hams are allowed to transmit with up to 1500 watts) for certain situations. For example when propagation doesn’t provide a signal path good enough for lower power communications, or when competing with other DXers to work a distant station, or to maximize the number of contacts you can attract in a contest.

Truth be told, I no longer own this amplifier. Although I now live in a house again and could conceivably rebuild a substantial installation, the fire in the belly for radio is in a dormant state for me and I finally succumbed to the reasonable offer the friend to whom I had loaned it made. He was using it, I wasn’t (and wouldn’t for the foreseeable future). It’s like my father when he sold his airplane, though (a tale told in my flying biography), I have no regrets about it.

Many hams have only small antennas or even wire antennas, but I was fortunate enough to be able to erect a 70’ tower next to the house and install a large directional array on it. It started out as a 60’ tower and a medium sized directional antenna (Mosely TA-33), but about a year after moving in, I added another 10’ at the suggestion of a friend—that brought me up to ≈70’, very close to a wavelength at 20 Meters, which is considered the lowest optimum height for an antenna for best takeoff angle of the radiated signal. Translation—makes me louder. I also replaced the Mosely with the Hy-Gain TH6DXX shown. The TH6 has slightly better gain but superior front-to-back ratio over the TA-33. The TA-33 went to a local friend for his first beam antenna.

This is a view from the back of the house on the day the TH6 went up. The shiny section of tower is the one I added. That’s me up on the tower. I did all the aerial work myself, sometimes with the help of some fine ground crew volunteers. The only exception was when I took the tower down—my good friend, Dave-of-many-calls, did a session topside bringing the mast and a few other things down.(Detailson all that the tower ultimately held—unfortunately I don’t have a picture of that)

As is the case with the woodworking shop documented elsewhere, this station no longer exists since we sold the house in Illinois and moved into a condominium in Florida. I have all the equipment in storage against a day when I can re-establish K4QG on the air. This is a picture from my radio active days pretending to operate (this was actually taken at a friend’s shack, but pictures of myself that I can stand to look at are rare). I can assure you that I now have less hair, it’s a different color, and I’m carrying more pounds than in this picture.

Let me sneak this in here before you get lost in my tales of equipment over-indulgence. I subscribed to 73 magazine for a few years in the late ’70s/early ’80s. There were frequently some good articles in it and it was sometimes amusing to see what editorial tangent the publisher, Wayne Green, W2NSD (SK, 13 September 2013), was going to go off on. He is legendary in that way. I’m not sure of the issue, but I was particularly taken by one article that had a lot of information about sending CW (Morse code) with a straight key (the old time, telegraph-type key, pictured right). By the time the article had been published, the vast majority of hams, particularly Novices, had jumped to electronic keyers, because they had trouble learning to send with a straight key. In recent years, however, there has been a resurgance of straight key operation. There’s even a group, SKCCStraight Key Century Clubdevoted to them.This articleexplains how to do it right.

I was first licensed in 1963, and in those days (and until the ’90s) a Novice license was the entry level license (now no longer available). Unlike more recent years, however, the Novice in those days was quite restricted in privileges and term of license. For example, back then, the Novice license was valid for one year only (and only one time), up-or-out. Power was limited to 75 watts (later increased to 200), and transmit frequency had to be crystal controlled.

I was very fortunate to have supportive parents in those teenage years who popped some pretty good money for my first station. My receiver was a used National NC300 purchased at Amateur Radio Center in Miami (long out of business). The NC300 only a few short years earlier had been marketed as the Dream Receiver based on the significant survey National had done among Amateurs looking for what Amateurs wanted in a top quality receiver.

Heathkit, a prominent electronics kit manufacturer from the 40s through the 80s, also produced a line of Amateur equipment, much of it still on the air today. The DX100 was a state of the art transmitter in the 50s, and still did a pretty good job when I got one (used) from an inactive ham who lived around the corner, no more than ten doors away.

These were not small pieces of equipment, and the DX100 had to have been so designated for its weight. I carried it by myself once...once. They took up a lot of room on a desk, and being made well before the advent of solid state, generated a lot of heat! Not that welcome to a Florida ham.

Some hams still like the older, vintage radios, and have extensive collections of them. Not me, though; I like my cool solid state, computer interfaced, no-tune modern equipment.