When I recently started e-mailing Steve KW4H about the Drake 2-B and about the SolderSmoke Direct Conversion receiver (that Steve successfully built), I noticed near the bottom of his QRZ.com page a picture of an old QSL card from KP4USN. It looked familiar.
Steve and I had already determined that we were very close in age. Steve was a Navy dependent, on Puerto Rico at age 15. I was up in Congers, N.Y., also at age 15. I was on 15 meter CW.
When I saw the picture of the QSL card, I checked my log book. You can see a cleaned up version of the log here. Look towards the end. You will see KP4USN.
But as Steve pointed out, there were several operators. And he was at this point mostly on SSB. It seemed that the odds were against us. But I pledged to try to dig up my old KP4USN QSL card. Steve asked me to tell him the name of the operator and he would tell me he knew him.
At first I thought the QSL card had been lost, perhaps during one of the many moves between then and now. But early this morning I found it. Slowly I turned it over. There it was: "73 Steve."
Wow, it looked like the signature of a 15 year old. I quickly e-mailed Steve and sent him the pictures of the card. He immediately confirmed that the handwriting was his! Wow, 52 years after the contact, we were in contact again.
I checked my records. I had acquired my Drake 2-B only 2 days prior to this contact. (That explains why I was on 15 meters -- my Lafayette HA-600A did very poorly on this band. But the band sounded great on the Drake 2-B! ). Later that day (into the night) I worked ZL2ACP. I woke my parents up to tell them about that one. The Drake 2-B was clearly worth every penny!
There is another signature on the card. Steve KW4H explains: That was Mike Reininga, who was a young guy back then in the Navy and was one of my elmers. In order for the card to be mailed officially and paid for by the Navy, it was approved for mailing. I just tried to look him up, and sadly, Mike passed away some years ago at age 58. He was 21 when I knew him.
Here is Steve as a young ham:
I was first licensed as WP4EAI, and was living in Puerto Rico, as a Navy brat. In 1975 I upgraded to General Class (boy, that 13 wpm code test was a white-knuckler -- these were the days when you had to take the exam in front of a steely-eyed examiner). In the photo at the left, you can see some of the old wonderful gear that got me started in this hobby. A Heathkit DX-60, Hammarlund HQ-180A, and some other stuff I can barely remember. Some original QSL cards are on the left. I also operated KP4USN from time to time on the base, and was frequently a control operator for the Maritime Mobile Net, then on 14.313 Mhz. Stateside, I was licensed as WB4EZM.
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Here I am at age 15:
And here is a description of my early radio life:
Yeah, Here I am, Young Bill, just thrilled to be sitting at the head of the Thanksgiving Table, when I could be on 40 meters. Sigh......
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