I Finally Make the "Big" Time
No longer would I be a grasser with a walkie-talkie signal, thanks to a little help from some good friends............
Anyone who has read this site and my lengthy radio history, pretty much knows the story. I started off my radio hobby with 100 milliwatt radios , upgraded to a 1 watt walkie-talkie, and eventually managing to save up just enough money to buy a Pace 23 channel mobile rig which I ran with a home made antenna and power supply. Then, with seemingly a wink of an eye and a wave of a proverbial magic wand, I made a giant leap forward, and found myself running a Lafayette Comstat 25 with a Radio Shack 1/2 wave ground plane antenna, and finally paying back my neighborhood nemesis Uncle Albert for stomping all over me when I had a less than stellar signal potential. A "wink of an eye" is a bit of a metaphorical exaggeration obviously, but when viewed retrospectively after nearly 40 years have gone by, that time period really does seem like a wink of an eye in comparison. In actuality, my metaphorical metamorphosis (try saying that with more than 3 or 4 beers under your belt) from the puppy of grasser status, to a full blown "big dog" in the CB radio arena, took only about a couple of months or so, which doesn't seem like a very long time at this stage in my life. But it seemed like an eternity to me back then. It was also an evolution which I could not have done completely by myself. I owe a great deal to a couple of really good friends who pulled for me to help make it all happen. Without them, it would likely have taken a much longer time (if ever) before I could put a real station together to compete in the sport of full-contact, smack down CB. A place where those with strong signals played the game whenever they wanted, while the weaker stations sat on the sidelines waiting for clear conditions. But regardless how long my ascension actually took, how it all came about is an interesting story in and of itself......
The stage would be set for my much anticipated rise to the big leagues beginning in July of 1974. I had finally gotten a full blown 4 watt, 23 channel rig. But purchasing the radio completely drained my pot of money, so I had nothing left over for either a power supply or a base antenna. So I had to homebrew both. I threw together a power supply and constructed a homemade 102" whip antenna. This allowed me to be able to put my new radio to use. My Rube Goldberg inspired, jury-rigged station actually worked rather well for what it was. It gave me more channels and better range than what I had previously using my 1-watt walkie-talkie. But even that noticable increase, was no match for another station with a commercial base antenna. Several of my friends, who were also in the process of upgrading their stations to play in the major leagues, besides acquiring 4 watt radios, had managed to also obtain decent base antennas as well. This signal competition between their setups and mine, was the primary driving force for my desire to upgrade. Further complicating my plight was my mother, who was getting increasingly antsy about my erecting any type of outdoor antenna. She didn't have much to say about my radio exploits when I was confined to a walkie-talkie, with its relatively small antenna safely contained within the confines of the house. But now that I was putting hunks of metal outside, she was starting to voice her displeasure. Her objections were based mainly on two issues; aesthetics (or more accurately, the lack of), and lightning attraction. The issue of lightning was probably the bigger of her two objections. I had always wondered why we had to watch TV with rabbit ears (along with all the ghosting and snowy pictures), while most of the rest of the neighborhood had outdoor antennas. The reason was not borne of laziness, or due to a lack of money, but it was a deliberate choice. The story, as my mother told me, was that back before I was born, my father had put up an outside TV antenna. Some time later, during one especially strong thunderstorm, a lightning strike had hit close enough to scare the bejesus out of my mother. She felt that the TV antenna was the reason for this so she made my father take the "lightning rod" of an antenna down shortly afterward. Great! She was afraid of lightning. Add to that, the fact that she just didn't like the looks of antennas, and CB antennas were definitely larger than TV antennas. So that, in a nutshell, was why she didn't want me putting up a "big ugly CB antenna". This was a major roadblock to my plans. But I figured that if I started off small, and gradually (and surreptitiously) raised and increased the size of the antenna, that my incremental approach would eventually ease my way up to a full sized antenna and show her there was nothing to be worried about. It wasn't guaranteed to get me where I wanted to be, but it was the best plan that I had at the time. Unfortunately, I was getting impatient. My signal was not up to par with that of my other friends, some of whom were lucky enough to have, not only their parent's blessings, but parents who also bought them their entire radio station, including a full sized antenna. The rest of the group, at the very least, had parents who seemed indifferent to the presence of an outdoor antenna. So I was definitely working at a disadvantage. My ever increasing thirst for radio experience, along with my competitive nature, would not allow me to endure being at the bottom of the pack signal-wise, so I started pushing things. The first thing I did was raise the whip antenna up about 5'. Then I started bumping up the voltage on my radio's homemade train transformer power supply in an attempt to get a couple more watts out. That proved to be disasterous, as I ended up toasting the final, which put the radio (and my hopes) out of commission for the better part of the next month. Once I got the fully repaired radio back in August, I had managed to procure a regulated power supply from a neighbor for a good price. So I decided to leave the radio alone and try improving the home brew antenna instead. So I took the bottom section of the burned out 5/8th wave Radio Shack ground plane antenna, that Steve had given me earlier that year, and turned it into a 1/4 wave GP with a 9' vertical radiator and three 102" horizontal radials. I mounted it just below the peak roof level on two 2X2 sections of wood nailed together and tied to the roof soffit by a large hose clamp. But I couldn't tune the SWR below 3:1, and it really didn't perform all that well (I hadn't learned yet that a direct-fed 1/4 wave antenna needed the radials to droop at a 45 degree angle to lower the feedpoint impedance). But that's the best I could do for the time being.
A year earlier, my short-lived experience with a friend's Heathkit "Lunchbox" tube radio, and the ease by which I could tune it up, had led me to believe that if I could obtain a tube-type radio, that it would be a simple matter for me to peak it up well above the standard 4 watt power level and that increase in power would make up for the deficiency of my home-made antenna (Did I say that I still had a lot to learn?). So by September I had made it known that I was looking for a tube rig. Enter Blue Bandit. BB was an adult friend and mentor who was always willing to help me out with my CB radio situation. He knew a lot of people on a bunch of channels, and he said that he would keep a look out for a rig like I wanted. In the meantime though, I needed to raise the cash to purchase the rig if one did come along. The easiest way to come up with that kind of money quickly, was to liquidate what I had. So I put my Pace and the regulated power supply up for sale. One of our newest locals, Cheetah, had been running a walkie-talkie and indicated that he wanted to buy my radio. So I sold him the stuff and pocketed my profits. But now I had a BIG problem - I no longer had a radio to talk on. The Pace was now gone, and my old 1 watt walkie-talkie had given up the ghost completely some time ago. I also didn't know how long it might take before BB would find my magical tube radio. The only radio I had left was my old 100 mW Midland 13-428. I tried hard to make the best out of a weak signal situation. I hooked the WT's output to my home-made ground plane, but it didn't help all that much. I couldn't be heard more than about a mile away. This was far worse than the situation I was in a month back when I had blown the final in the Pace. I really felt like I took a major step backward. But after a few days of this, Blue Bandit took pity on my pathetic situation, and offered me the use of his backup mobile radio, a Royce 1-600. This radio was a basic no-frills AM model not much different from my old Pace, except for one important (to me at least) detail, it had an S meter (one that also turned red when you transmitted)! Bandit's Royce also came equipped with a Turner mobile +3 preamplified mic wired to it. I was excited, to say the least, that I was about to be rescued from my flea-power purgatory. But his generous offer of the radio came with a catch. BB was helpful, but he wasn't stupid and he didn't trust my homebrew antenna with the bad SWR, to not hurt his radio. So he said that I had to get a decent antenna, and I also needed to come up with a GOOD (IE: not homemade) power supply to run it on. Oh-oh I thought, as my earlier euphoria suddenly faded, how am I going to pull all of this together? I had the money which I had gotten from the sale of the Pace. But if I used some of that to buy an antenna and power supply, there would likely not be enough left over to buy the radio I wanted, and it could be months before I could replace what I had spent. I knew I could borrow BB's radio for a little while, but I didn't think he'd let me keep it for 4 or 5 months. And there was still the issue of my mother's aversion to antennas. So my immediate prospects didn't look all that good. But when you have good friends, sometimes a seemingly insurmountable obstacle becomes a leisurely walk in the park....
The word got out on what I needed, and the first to step up to the plate was Dead Soldier (John). John was the kind of guy who would give the shirt off of his back to help out people in need, and my case was no exception. He had a spare used Radio Shack 1/2 wave "Super Maxim" ground plane antenna sitting around collecting dust, which he was willing to GIVE to me (Wow!). Blue Bandit had a spare 25' length of coax cable and 20' of steel mast that he threw in the pile. Then finally, Fire Dragon, a neighbor of Dead Soldier's, was willing to lend me one of those old 1.75 amp unregulated Radio Shack power supplies (Ironically this was not much better than my home-made supply). All of a sudden, in a matter of days, it looked like I had all the ingredients for the pie, but it still wasn't ready for the oven just yet. I still had one BIG hurdle to get over. Yep, that 1/2 wave antenna was certainly a bit bigger than my homemade 1/4 wave contraption, and my mother took one look at it and said absolutely NO WAY! So there I was, so close that I could almost feel the surge of having real CB power, but yet still so very far away from finally rejoining the group as a full fledged member. Things were not looking good for me at this point, but then Blue Bandit saved the day (again!). He had been coming over my house for some time now to have coffee and was on fairly friendly terms with my mother. Somehow, he managed to twist her one arm (while I twisted the other) and convinced her into relenting and letting me put the antenna up. I wasn't sure she could be swayed, but Bandit, a salesman by trade, knew the right approach to take, and she finally caved. Well, once she reluctantly agreed, the antenna was up in less than a half hour. I didn't mess around when it came to the betterment of my station, and I didn't want to risk my mother changing her mind. The new steel mast was placed in the same location as my former 2X2 wooden pole, and secured to the house by the same hose clamp (see this story which tells when that clamp finally met its match). The 20' of mast placed the antenna radials just above the peak of the roof and just barely in the clear. Bandit had to bring down his Midland base to use the built-in SWR meter to check the SWR (neither he nor I owned an SWR meter then). Finding it satisfactory at 1.4:1, he was satisfied that the Royce would be "safe". So after I failed to convince him to just leave the Midland SSB rig with me (darn!), we set up the Royce. That night, a few people were surprised to see me back on the air with a signal higher than it had ever been before. Some initially thought that I was operating from someone else's station. It felt good to be on relatively equal footing with the rest of the group. But even with my new 1/2 wave antenna, I was still just below Uncle Albert in signal to the rest of the group. But now instead of completely taking me out, he could only bump heads and cause us both to be unreadable in the heterodyne. The Royce radio was only doing about 3 watts or less as the unregulated power supply was not holding the voltage to 13V on transmit, but I was happy for the moment. This setup was sure better than my old homebrew antenna, and it sure beat having to use a 100 mW walkie-talkie. Plus, for the first time, I had an S-meter to stare at when people talked. I talked on the Royce for the next couple of weeks, until one day during our usual after school daily chats, Blue Bandit broke in. I could tell it was not his normal radio since he sounded bassy and a bit muffled. I asked what he was running, and I'll never forget his answer, which was: "Well, you're running on my radio, so I'm running on yours". It seemed that Bandit had picked up a Lafayette Comstat 25 for me. To be honest, I was a little disappointed in how it sounded, but at last I would have my own radio again. The Lafayette came with a Turner +2 desk mic, but I soon worked up a trade with another local for a D-104. The D-104 was a much better match for that radio, and it was much less muffled with it. But the best part was that this radio had already been "peaked" and put out very close to 6 watts of power with a fresh final tube. That extra 3db of power over the Royce meant that I was now finally higher than Uncle Albert's signal, and I never looked back. During the next 9 months, I would change antennas twice, and also pick up my first "linear" power amplifier, which would result in even greater signal potential.
Time has moved forward and much has changed since then, but I look longingly back on that seemingly interminably long month's time during September of 1974, and of the friends who helped me get to where I am. It was a rough time, but it was also a memorable one, due to the hurdles I had to get over to get to the final achievement, and the camaraderie of my fellow radio friends. It was those little challenges which stand out in my memory as the most rewarding and best part of the hobby. That's why, to this day, I will do my best to help out people who are having problems getting their stations set up. One good turn deserves another, I always say......
