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Amateur Radio
From an early age, I was fascinated with radio, radio tubes, tube amplifiers and TV's. Vacuum tubes were magic; all of the elements visible inside in a vacuum, and they emitted light. To a young mind, what was hppening inside was magic.
Family members would give me their old radios, phonographs and TV's. When I found a working short wave radio, I hung a wire outside my window listening and searching for hours at a time. In those days, the time standard, WWV, would identify every five minutes in Morse code as: WWV WWV V V V. I believe the three V's signified "Victory, Victory, Victory".
In my teen years, my friend John had a "Johnson Viking Messenger I" CB radio on a table in his room. He was actually talking on this thing to people who were several miles away; having never seen one before, I was immediately enthralled. I had to have one and was soon on the CB band. With a few pieces sourced from an old color TV, building a linear amplifier was possible. My first homebrew solo 6LQ6 linear amplifier, built from a hand-drawn schematic, actually worked. Lacking a wattmeter in those days, I tuned it on a 60-watt lightbulb as my high school electronics teacher had once demonstrated.
In 1985, I obtained a Novice amateur radio license but didn't use it. I had been divorced and met my current wife; buying a house followed as did a couple more kids and on and on. Radio took a back seat until 2003 when my friend John--yes, the same friend with the old Viking Messenger I CB, got his Technician license. I took the Technician practice exams on QRZ and quickly took and passed the FCC Technician exam. I soon took the General class and the Amateur Extra class exams as well.
During the CB days in the 1970's, I ran a Johnson Viking Ranger for a time on amplitude modulation (AM). In 2022, it was time to get back into AM--more specifically, plate-modulated AM, and this time, on the amateur bands. I picked up a couple of Johnson Viking Rangers that had seen better days. Then, in January, 2023, the Johnson Viking 500 and the second Viking Valiant were found. These transmitters are described elsewhere on this site and are now the main my AM transmitters. The station receiver is currently a Collins 75A-4 with a Hammarlund SP-600 JX-26 for general short wave reception.
Jonson Viking Messenger I CB:
