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My road to the Novice license and Ham Radio started in 1957. My Dad gave me a Cat’s Whisker Crystal Set for XMAS and after putting it together, all I could hear was WCBS 880 and WNBC 660 beating together with a very loud signal. These two stations share a common tower located on CITY ISLAND, NY – which is in Long Island Sound just off the coast of New Rochelle, NY. This was probably about 10 miles from me and with 50KW pwer levels, it was no wonder that I could hear them in the Town of Rye, NY on the CONN border.

Very soon one day thereafter, I heard this BOOMING AM signal come into my headphones and over ride WCBS/WNBC saying “CQ DX 20 beaming Asia – this is W2 KING FOX ABLE – W2KFA – listening 14.200 down.” I ran to my Dad and said he needed to listen to this and tell me what it was!

He listened and said he was pretty sure it was a local Ham operator and that if I got on my bike after school the next afternoon, I might go look around the area to see if I could find a tower with an antenna on it. I did that as instructed and not too far away I found that tower on a small hill – hard to get to from my home as it was on a hill on a private road – but by line of sight I was less than 1000 feet from W2KFA’s home. W2KFA was none other than GENE LOMBARDI then 39 years old and one of the better DX signals on 20m AM in those days along with Clarence W2KW and Bill Salerno W2ONV.

It took me some time to get my courage up but soon thereafter, I knocked on Gene’s door and he decided to let me in and let me watch how he could work into EU on 20M to some DL stations. Immediately I was hooked and asked “Mr Lombardi, how can I learn how to do this?”

Gene said wait a minute and handed me an ARRL license manual and told me to study it – and when I thought I was ready to come again. BUT – he said you ALSO HAVE TO LEARN THE MORSE CODE at 5 wpm sending and receiving. If you think you can pass both the CW and the EXAM, I can give you the test. This was by now in late January.

In order to start learning the code I needed a receiver and used my paper route dollars to buy an ALLIED RADIO KNGIHT KIT “Space Spanner” which was a 3 tube super regenerative Rx. It covered 6-16Mhz which included the 40m and 20M ham bands.

Gene told me to cut one of the speaker wires and run them outside the RX box to my J38 HAND KEY and then set the RX onto some Russian jammer. By closing the key contacts I had created a very crude but very useful kind of CODE PRACTICE OSCILLATOR and used the jammer to learn how to send the code. For Rx listening I would close the key and tune the 40m Novice band which was then 7150-7200 kHz.

Around July I thought I was really ready to take the tests and called GENE. I took both and passed and then every day I kept checking the mail to see if a letter had arrived from the FCC. Finally in mid October, there was a very small envelope signed by a “CB PLUMMER” of the FCC that said I was now WV2CLQ – which was a callsign that even GENE had never heard of. He said “WHAT THE HELL KIND OF A STUPID CALLSIGN WAS THAT???” You should have been a KN2 something!!. He told a G3 station over the air who agreed that it was a really poor callsign. I was bummed but ready to get on the air. But in October I did not have a transmitter – so I worked my paper route until XMAS when I got my XMAS tips – including one from K2KQ’s DAD W2ANX to whom I delivered papers in 1958!” I used to look with awe at the 3el yagi for 20m on the small tower in Joe Toman’s rear yard – I could only DREAM of one day having something like that!

Over XMAS I labored non-stop building a HEATHKIT DX 20 and by early January I was on 40m CW with 50w input into a low dipole aimed N/S and making some ragged qso’s. It was hard initially for sure. My antenna changeover relay was an open frame DPDT KNIFE SWITCH – all of us used those for changing from RX over to TX in those days – none of us could afford the HUGE EXPENSE of a DOW Key relay! That was another impossible dream at the time……

My Novice career was pretty limited by that KNIGHT KIT Rx – it was VERY sensitive but all it covered was the 40m Novice Band and my single XTAL was 7173khz. Mostly I worked East coast stations from ME to FLA and one evening a VE3 called me and I was really excited to hear a DX signal. But in the middle of that QSO the A/C mains power FAILED and the qso was not completed. It would be a long time before I would work another DX station.

Just down the street my local school classmate who was named Ron Chopski (WV2CHD) had what I thought was a dream Novice station. He had a DX 40 and a HAMMARLUND HQ 110C RX and best of all he had a 3el 15m yagi atop a 36 ft high push-up mast. And he was working DX like mad every day up there on 15M. Once in a while he let me work over there on 15m and I managed to work a G3 or two at his place. But compared to my station, his was great I thought. Oh well….

One night in mid summer I worked several Calif stations on 40CW – which was undoubtedly my rarest DX from my home. I woke my Dad to tell him about it but at 4AM he was not very interested. He told me to go back to bed and tell him all about it over breakfast in the morning.

So that was my NOVICE experience and first station.

In those days the NOVICE was a one year term and NOT RENEWABLE – so it was upgrade to GENERAL class or you were OUT. For me that meant before October if I was to stay on the air! So all of us in the local area started studying like MAD in late Spring in order to go to NYC to take the General test. A group of us would study together – me, John WV2EKH (now K2ZM) – and Neil WV2EKG. (SK)

In my first two attempts I passed the CW easily but the LEGENDARY MR FINKELMAN at the NYC FCC Office had the distinct pleasure of advising me that I did not pass the written exam – he would look at me with a shit-eating grin and say “BRIGGS – 30days!” It would take another 3 months into Julybefore I finally passed my GENERAL and I think only then because MR FINKELMAN was not there that day as he was on his summer vacation.

Ah yes – those were the days and like most of us, I still remember them quite well today.

73 JEFF K1ZM/VY2ZM