Dah didah dit... Dah dah didah
Such was the forerunner of chat rooms back in Amateur Radio days. You had to have a transmitter (with a transformer so heavy you had to grunt to lift it) and a receiver. You had to know Morse code with an efficiency of at least five words per minute. It was a lot more difficult than entering chat rooms today, though I never heard of sexual predators operating under these circmstances. I guess five words per minute was a little slow for those fast talkers.When I was growing up during the thirties, my cousins and their friends all had these "ham" rigs, and in time I married a fighter pilot who entered his military career as a radio operator in the Signal Corps. Later on, as a Cub Scout Den Mother, I taught Morse Code to my den of six cub scouts for their merit badges, and one of them later entered the U.S. Navy and became a Signalman. I never mastered the flags or tried to, but I guess he did. Pinky, if you are still out there, I hope you are alive and well.
Part of our electronic experiment was to make crystal radios. Each Cub Scout had to bring an empty toilet paper roll, and we furnished the wire, the crystal feeler, and the headsets (we were in the radio business at the time). The toilet paper roll became the core we used to wrap the copper wire around, and the little "feeler" served as a tuning device placed gingerly along the coil until a signal was identified.
When the boys pulled an AM signal out of the empty air, you should have seen the looks on their faces. I suppose it can still be done, but the irony of using a toilet paper roll in order to "make" a radio was a novelty. No one was more surprised than I, but my husband, who masterminded the whole affair, just smiled. His Air Force uniform still hung in the closet, and we were trying to wring a business from out of nothing, but he had the time to share his knowledge and training with others -- some who became his competitors, and he did it with no reservations.
Amateur radio operators were active in those days as one of the first lines of civil defense when disaster (tornadoes, floods, and the like) struck. If you can imagine a world without cell phones, or the internet; still, we lived. Every now and then you can spot an automobile equipped with amateur radio by the antennas they carry, or by their license plate. The plates will be their call letters, like W5EJT, and their houses will look a bit like Cheyenne Mountain. The lower the radio band, the taller the antenna. That's where you may go when the electricity is out (they mostly have their own power supplies) and perhaps you want to know how your old parents are doing in Minneapolis. And he will call on his transmitter, CQ, CQ, CQ, Minnesota, is anybody out there? Come back.
I think he will still get an answer. I hope so. The American Radio Relay League (ARRL) is still alive and well. Google it!
When the boys pulled an AM signal out of the empty air, you should have seen the looks on their faces. I suppose it can still be done, but the irony of using a toilet paper roll in order to "make" a radio was a novelty. No one was more surprised than I, but my husband, who masterminded the whole affair, just smiled. His Air Force uniform still hung in the closet, and we were trying to wring a business from out of nothing, but he had the time to share his knowledge and training with others -- some who became his competitors, and he did it with no reservations.
Amateur radio operators were active in those days as one of the first lines of civil defense when disaster (tornadoes, floods, and the like) struck. If you can imagine a world without cell phones, or the internet; still, we lived. Every now and then you can spot an automobile equipped with amateur radio by the antennas they carry, or by their license plate. The plates will be their call letters, like W5EJT, and their houses will look a bit like Cheyenne Mountain. The lower the radio band, the taller the antenna. That's where you may go when the electricity is out (they mostly have their own power supplies) and perhaps you want to know how your old parents are doing in Minneapolis. And he will call on his transmitter, CQ, CQ, CQ, Minnesota, is anybody out there? Come back.
I think he will still get an answer. I hope so. The American Radio Relay League (ARRL) is still alive and well. Google it!
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