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Wesley E. Hall Amateur Radio Station Holly Springs, Mississippi First ham license in 1956, K5JYH, Tahlequah, Oklahoma Second ham licnese in 1964, WB6LVF, Modesto, California Present ham license in 1966, Highlandville, Missouri Background I built my first radio set when I was about nine, from a schematic diagram. I built it inside a Roi-Tan cigar box, using pencil lead for wiring (erasing to reduce resistance, increase conductance). I bought a cat whisker and a crystal, and to the astonishment of my folks it picked up KADA, just across the river from us. I never doubted for a moment that it would work. When I was seventeen I enlisted in the Navy and was sent to New Caledonia, in the South Pacific. This was during WW2. After about a year on that island I went to a fleet radio school, near Noumea, New Caledonia, and came out a Radioman Third Class. Was I excited! From the school I went to NXZ, the COMSOPAC base radio station. It was the center of action in the South Pacific, but the war had moved north; so I found a wooden subchaser headed in that direction and managed a transfer. We joined a convoy in the Fijis and went up to the Solomons, New Guinea, Manus, the Palaus, and, finally, the Philippines. For almost a year and a half I was second radio on that subchaser, the SC-995. We participated in three invasions, dodged several kamikazes, barely survived a typhoon, and ended up patrolling the Marianas Trench at the end of the war (The Enola Gay took off from Tinian Air Strip, which ended up at the Trench).

Send me an email. Later, when I get my rig going again, we'll holler at each other.

I did a hitch in the U. S. Coast guard back in the late 'Forties, right after I got back from the Pacific. It was a wild time, and my first assignment was as second radio aboard the CGC Alert, based in Eureka, California. I say wild because there was a feud going on there between us and the Portuguese fishing fleet that worked out of Humboldt Bay. Somewhere I picked up something and had to be hospitalized for a time in San Francisco. This gave me a black mark, and from then on things went down fast for me. I spent time on the CGC Roger B. Taney, a spit-and-polish destroyer-size weather ship, the Chautauqua and the Escanaba, two Indian cutters also assigned to Weather Station Fox, midway between Frisco and Honolulu. When my welcome wore out on these big boys, I was sent to the CGC Bramble, a glorified buoy tender, working out of Goat Island, which holds up the center of the Oakland-SF Bay Bridge. I stayed out of trouble for a time but, of course, the officers on the Bramble knew all about me; and the day came when I was sent back to the old Alert! I was in hog heaven. But I was hardly settled in when an opportunity came along for me to travel by land across the country to Baltimore and pick up the CGC Storis, a big ice-breaker! On the way I stopped off in Oklahoma and got married!
The Storis took me down the East Coast to Norfolk, on south to Panama, across to the Pacific, back up the West Coast of the U. S. to Frisco, Seattle, Ketchikan, and finally, home in Juneau, Alaska! That's where my Coastie career ended.
Most of my hamming took place in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, in the late 'Sixties. One of the great things I remember about those days were the hamfests held in the Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Most of the hams at this shindig went armed with mobile radios and direction finders for the big transmitter hunt. One year my old buddy Carl Mahaney, K5JLS, and I came within about an inch of winning first prize. Actually, we were cheated out of it. I'll tell you about it sometime. 73

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Undoubtedly the most popular amateur radio magazine in the USA is QST. But to be frank with you if it weren't for all the other stuff (besides the how-to stuff) I would not recommend it. All of the stories, discussions about equipment, chit-chat about this and that are written by engineers, who must get a kick out of the confusion they cause among rank-and-file hams. But QST is a must if you want to keep up with what's going on in the world of the radio amateur.Besides, you've got to join the ARRL (American Radio Relay League), and when you do the magazine comes with it. As they say, the only sure thing in this life is change; and hamming has changed about as much as anything else. Mostly, these days, what you hear on ten and fifteen meters is a lot of technical crap from engineers and yappyteyapping from foreigners who are ignoring the international amateur radio rules. Old DX contacts The best QSL of them all!