This is my story of how I discovered the allure of radio and became WA2ETU.

Any relationship to reality is probably coincidental.

Regardless, this is now I remember it!

I was raised on a small farm in western New York.  The town of Ripley adjoins the shores of Lake Erie to the north and  borders with Pennsylvania on the west.  When I was very young we had dairy cattle, grape vineyards, fruit orchards, berry fields and hay fields.  Before I reached my teen years the farm was totally converted to a grape farm.  Common to the area.

In the early/mid 1950's I was in the cub scouts.  My mother was our den mother, but in fact it was my father who ran the den meetings.  All the kids wanted to be in our den because we always had the best projects to work on.   One of those projects was to make a crystal radio.  We used the typical Oatmeal box to wind the coil on and used a galena cat whisker for the detector.    I spend many nights listening to that radio while I was supposed to be sleeping.  The earphones I used were found in the attic of the old family home across the street from where I lived and where my father and his three brothers and one sister grew up.  The attic had several treasures that my cousin, Billy, and I liked to play with.  At the time we had no idea what most of the items were.  Later I would learn that my father's brother, Ed, had been involved with spark gap.  We were playing with what was left of his spark gap and telegraph equipment.

I learned that there were several improvements that I could make to the very basic crystal set.  In the coming months I built several models using variable turning capacitors and crystal diodes.  Some were small enough to hold in the palm of my hand.

I assume it was my uncle Ed that told me I could buy a kit radio that would perform much better than the crystal sets.  Soon I had an Allied Radio catalog and ordered a Knight Kit, the Space Spanner.

The Space Spanner was a simple regenerative receiver using three tubes, one being a rectifier.   When I initially built the radio it did not work.  My parents took me and the radio to a neighbor who lived across the road from the south side of our farm.  He was a Radio, TV repair man and I soon learned that Willy was also a ham, K2ZYX.  It didn't take him long to find a cold solder joint.  A little heat and the radio worked.  This was much better than the crystal sets.  I think I was already hooked. 

I starting learning a bit about amateur radio from K2ZYX, a dedicated six meter operator, and uncle Ed who had let his license lapse.   I know at one time he had a one by one call, probably self assigned, and then a W8 call when New York state was in the eighth call area.  Besides ARRL publications, some of my favorite reading material is shown below.  The Newark Electronics catalog was another favorite.

I was fourteen in the summer of 1956.  Two years earlier at the age of twelve I had started working summers on the neighbors farm to earn spending money.  I worked forty to forty-five hour weeks hand hoeing the tomato fields.  Not fun, but I liked the money, $1.00 per hour, and what it could buy.  That summer I saved enough money to buy a National NC-88 receiver from Allied Radio.  I really wanted a NC-98 but that was too expensive.  It seemed like it took weeks for the radio to arrive.  It came by train packed in a wooden box.  It was fantastic compared to any radio I had ever heard.

Shortly after receiving the radio I learned that my uncle Louie (mother's brother-in-law) was also interested in radio.  In fact he already had the latest Hallicrafter receiver in his basement.    For several years he always had the newest Hallicrafter receiver.   However, he never did get his amateur license.

By the summer of 1957 I was set on getting an amateur radio license.  I was back in the tomato fields earning money for the equipment I would need.  I bought a Heathkit Q-multiplier, QF-1,  which greatly improved my receiving capability.  I also put together a portable AM radio that worked but was very heavy due to the battery pack and too costly to use because of the short life of the batteries.  I loved putting kits together.   I was obsessed when putting kits together!  I didn't even want to stop to eat.   In future years several kits would be put together without taking a break.  And, they always worked.  Over the years I built several audio and test equipment kits as well as ham equipment.  I also build several homebrew projects from interfaces to linear amps.

Although I didn't have a license I bought a Globe Chief 90 transmitter kit from World Radio Laboratory that summer.  It cost $49.95.  Their cheapest transmitter kit.  It was crystal controlled and had a pair of 807's in the final.

I continued spending most of my hard earned money on more equipment.  I bought a conelrad unit, the CA-1 from Heathkit, as the law at that time said we needed to monitor a broadcast station and turn off our transmitting equipment if the broadcast station went off the air.   The conelrad unit inter connected the AM radio and the transmitter to automate this function.  We weren't that far down the road from World War II.

I bought a screen modulator kit, SM-90, from WRL.  It was designed to plug into the rear of the Globe Chief.  Later I would find that it was pretty much useless.

I bought a Heathkit VFO kit, VF-1.  I would later find that it did not have enough drive for the Globe Chief.

In early 1958 I was ready to take my novice test.  I had learned that the school music teacher was a ham operator, Lyman, K2VCG.  He came to my house to administer the test.  At that time you did not go to the FCC district office to take the novice test as you had to do for higher license levels (an exception being the Conditional class license).  I easily passed the test and began the wait of several weeks for the license to arrive.   When it did arrive I was on the air immediately as WV2ETU.  I think I had six or eight crystals to set the transmit frequency.  A novice station had to be crystal controlled.  You would tune the band looking for an answer to your CQ.   I operated on 80, 40 and 15 meters.  Of course, I could only operate CW on those bands.  My antenna was a multi band trap dipole at perhaps 20 or 25 feet in the air.  This period was probably the most fun I ever had as a ham radio operator.

My novice station is shown below.  Note that the microphone (Astatic JT-30) is not attached and the VFO and screen modulator are not connected.  The receiver and transmitter together cost a total of $170 plus shipping when purchased.  In 2005 dollars what would be approximately $1172.  That is for a modest CW only station.  What we get for our money now is a comparative bargain.

Below is my first QSL card, a design used by many new hams at the time.