There wasn’t much for a kid to do in 1964. At 14, I enjoyed patrolling the alleys of Bellflower, California, with my grandfather and collecting soda bottles to return for a deposit. Besides soda bottles, I’d also browse the trash behind various businesses. Occasionally, I’d find a real treasure. My favorite place to scavenge was an appliance repair shop.
To my delight, I found an old Zenith tabletop AM radio sitting on top of the dumpster. I took it home and cautiously plugged it in, unsure if it would suddenly explode. To my surprise, it worked!
Sure, the case was damaged and the knob that controlled the volume was gone. That didn’t matter to me because I was able to hear stations that my transistor radio couldn’t pick up. But that wasn’t anything compared to my next amazing discovery.
Nestled between a dented two-slice toaster and some components that once belonged to an electric fan was a radio that also had several shortwave bands. Now it was game on!
I strung up a longwire antenna that went from a utility pole to the garage, which doubled as my workshop. I was able to pick up Voice of America and several foreign broadcast stations. I was hearing Morse code on the amateur bands which piqued my interest. I started asking around about ham radio and found that there were no age requirements, all you had to do was pass a test.
I remembered that the man who owned a local camera store was a ham radio operator. I visited him, and he eventually tested me for my novice-class license. I passed the exam on basic electronics, FCC rules, and Morse code.
I waited for about two weeks, anxiously checking the mail each day when I got home from school. Finally, I received the letter from the FCC assigning me the call letters WN6UKK. At last, I had a license to communicate with the world!
I built the rig on an aluminum chassis and attached a 19-inch rack panel. It looked quite high-end for the 1960s. I had my father take me to Henry Radio in Anaheim to browse through a box of crystals for the Novice CW band. I watched with anticipation as the tube filaments lit up. Nothing exploded. There was no smoke. Although it drifted and chirped, it worked! For the next several months, that, along with my Hallicrafters S-38 receiver, made up my first ham radio station.
I was on the air. There were still limits, though. I was restricted to 75 watts of power and could only transmit using Morse code. Plus, if I didn’t increase my code speed to at least 13 words per minute and pass my General Class license exam within the next year, I would be out of luck. The Novice Class license was only valid for one year.
I managed to increase my code speed to around 15 WPM, enough to pass the General Class code test. I studied a worn-out copy of the ARRL license manual until I was pretty sure I would pass the written test. I talked my mother into getting me an excused absence from school, and I rode the bus to the federal building in downtown Los Angeles to take the test.
I remembered the FCC examiners with their white shirts and skinny black ties. If I had taken the classroom tests in high school as seriously as I took this one, I probably would have become a Rhodes Scholar. The effort paid off, and two weeks later, I received my General Class license in the mail.
The biggest differences were that my license was now valid for ten years, and I could use “phone” or voice communications on a much wider range of frequencies. The sky was the limit — at least in my mind.
Morse Code
Telegraph Keys