K2AS Ham Radio

Something I had been wanting to look for this hamfest season was an old VFO. They are typically more rare than transmitters from that era, because most transmitters in those days were crystal controlled, or had built-in VFOs. My old novice transmitter is crystal controlled, and my old xtals are in the wrong part of the band now, and xtals are hard to find. They are no longer being made for the ham market. Ones that you can find are not cheap anymore. So for a bit more convenience, I had looked at various options. On eBay, old VFOs are expensive. $100 – 240, often the seller had no idea if they work. A modern design digital VFO “kit” is also not cheap, and may take some effort to get to work with my transmitter. With not many sellers at the AWA Swapmeet, and already spending $80 of my $105 dollars in my pocket, I saw this Eico 722 VFO that a latecomer put out. I don’t think the seller was a ham. He didn’t know anything about the VFO. It was missing ...

A month or two ago, I posted about researching my callsign. I was going through some old QSLs and found something interesting I thought I would add. Sometime in 1999, Irv Goodman, AF2K contacted me. He told me that he knew a ham in Florida, whose callsign was W2AS. He said W2AS would like to contact me on the air, so Irv arranged a schedule. So on May 24, 1999, I had a SSB QSO on 20 meters with Bill Kennedy, W2AS. He was 94 years old at the time! He was originally from New York. We had a nice QSO, and we exchanged QSL cards. So I have had this QSL on my wall for 24 years. Unfortunately, he passed a few years later. But today I happened to find in my stack of QSLs that are in a drawer, this copy of his 1923 QSL card. It was before they had W as a prefix, and his call was 2AS. So I guess it kind of counts as another previous holder of the AS callsign. I completely forgot I had this until I found it today.

So, early in 1971, I was a freshman in high school. My school had a club station, callsign WB2ZBQ. It was officially the “Wayne Central Science Club”, which was led by science teacher George Cataldo and got started in the mid to late 60s. Bill Kasperkoski WB2SXY was one of the members, among a few others. I think by 1968, all student hams had graduated, and the club was idle. I had a Heathkit GR-64 since late 1969. But in 1971, I realized it probably wasn’t adequate as a novice transceiver. It was shortwave, 560 Khz to 30 MHz, but limited bandspread. I saw an ad in the Kodakery, a periodical for Kodak employees. It had an ad section, and I saw an ad for a Hammarlund HQ-110. I think my parents saw ham radio as a worthwhile endeavor for a 15 year old, (as opposed to a drum set or mini-bike which I never got )and we took a ride out to North Greece and bought it. Most of my morse code training was listening to W1AW code practice that summer on that receiver. Also...

I attended the AWA Spring 2023 Swapmeet today. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, maybe some crystals or cheap test equipment. There weren’t a lot of sellers, but some decent prices on some items. A Hammarlund HQ-100 caught my eye as it had a nice matching speaker, which I could use for my HQ-110. The seller was Janis AB2RA, AKA Wireless Girl . She didn’t want to separate the speaker from the receiver, but she was selling both for $80, which one probably could have gotten for just the speaker on eBay. Not only that, but this receiver was a project she worked on and wrote an article about in the February 2021 issue of “ Electric Radio “. Power supply caps were new, a crystal calibrator was added, she improved several areas of the radio, and repaired IF transformer suffering from silver mica disease. She included a photocopy of the Electric Radio article, but I guess I need to order the back issue for my self. It documents all the improveme...

I had been thinking about my days as a new ham in 1971. Just for fun, I thought I would write down some of my remembrances, for what it’s worth, and possibly compare them to what a new ham of today might experience. It has been over a half-century now, which I can’t believe I’m even saying. I became interested in radio after often looking at Allied, Lafayette, and Heathkit catalogs in the late 1960s. My Dad had built some Heathkits, stereo, portable radio, TV. They bought me a Heath GR-64 in 1969, which I built with his help. Mid-1971 was when I became involved in ham radio, and I began studying for my Novice exam. In those days, there was no Volunteer Examiner program. All exams were taken at FCC offices except the Novice (and the unusual Conditional license). Any licensed General Class ham or above could administer a Novice exam. The FCC did start to give exams at some hamfests in the late 70s or early 80s, but had not begun them as of 1971. I don’t recall ...