I was reading new posts on 'Antique Radio Forums' and saw this post from
someone that used to be an SBARC member back in the mid-sixties. The
thread question was "What was your funniest moment in ham radio?"
OK, you asked for it. This happened about 1964 or '65 and takes place at
the Santa Barbara Amateur Radio Club field day site which was in the hills
above the town:
Because of the location that was chosen for the Field Day site, the two
meter station had to be located a few hundred feet West of everyone else in
order to get a line of sight shot into LA where all the contacts were. One
of the hams drove his pickup truck down there and set me up as the two
meter phone station. I had a borrowed Gonset Communicator III on the
transmission hump of the truck, and a four element beam used for
"T-Hunting" rigged to the driver's door where I could "armstrong" rotate it
as needed.
I worked about a hundred contacts for the club station and so contributed
something to our overall score. However, I was the only operator for the
two meter station. Therefore, as the wee hours arrived and the band was
about "worked out", I was getting pretty sleepy.
As I got sleepier and sleepier in my operating position behind the wheel of
the pickup truck, I would nod off and my head would fall forward, coming to
rest on the horn ring on the truck steering wheel. The resulting blast
would wake me up and I would tune around hunting for a station I hadn't
worked for awhile, and then boredom and weariness would overtake me,
causing me to nod off again and the process would repeat.
The next day, the camp was full of people grumpily enquiring what idiot
kept blowing a car horn about every fifteen minutes around four o'clock in
the morning !? People were trying to sleep! Once the cause became generally
known, it became the joke of the camp. Fortunately for me, field day hams
were a good-natured and tolerant lot in those days.
73,
_________________
Jim T.
KB6GM
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73, and stay healthy!
--
Brian - K6BPM
See page 70 of the January 2022 edition of QST for a mention of QST (pdf attached).
LCM
Levi C. Maaia, K6LCM
Director at Large | K6TZ Trustee
Santa Barbara Amateur Radio Club
Santa Barbara Wireless Foundation
a 501(c)(3) nonprofit public benefit corporation
www.levimaaia.com | www.k6lcm.com
+1.805.604.5384
If anyone is interested, ARRL has a digital reissue of the 1915 QST for
free here (you can download it as a PDF): <https://www.arrl.org/qst-reissue>
Ken
KA6KEN
