----- Forwarded Message ----
From: Gary Smith <wa1...@yahoo.com>
To: kjo...@virtualcohesion.com
Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2009 10:44:30 AM
Subject: Re: [DX-CHAT] Most memorable QSO
Hi Kelly,
As soon as I read your message, I didn't even have to go back through all of my
QSL's to remember my most memorable QSO. Here's what happened:
It was the 10th of October, 1965. I was just 5 days from my 13th birthday. I
was already a dedicated SWL and had confirmed 50 countries as part of Hank
Bennett's WPE Awards program. My father was a musician and also a shortwave
radio enthusiast. One of the fellows he played in a band with with was Johnny
Russo, K1OVI. When Jonny heard that I was interested in radio, he invited me
to come to his house to see his shack. He lived in a three family house in
Torrington, CT, and had converted one stall of a 3 car garage into his radio
room. He was running a Swan 500 and had a 50 foot tower beside the garage with
a tri-band beam on it. When I arrived, he was puttering around, cleaning
things up. He had the radio tuned up on 20 meters. He took a few minutes to
teach me how to call CQ and then cut me loose to see if I could make a contact.
I called CQ for probably 15 minutes before anyone came back to me. The
station that finally responded was WA4UVR
(my first ham contact!!!). Johnny was surprised at the WA4 prefix because he
said that he had the beam pointed at Europe. It only took a couple of minutes
to find out that the WA4UVR call belonged to Ensign J.A. Stradauskas, one of
the ships radio operators on the U.S.S. Forrestal, an aircraft carrier
stationed in the Med. You can just imagine the thrill a 12 year old boy
experienced that night, sitting in front of a black box in Connecticut and
talking to someone aboard an aircraft carrier several thousand miles away.
A couple of weeks later, the attached QSL card arrived. My very first from a
2-way contact! It was the beginning of my love affair with radio. My Dad and
I became hams together. I moved from Connecticut to Illinois and we enjoyed
many good QSO's over the years until he became a silent key in 1982. After his
passing, I took a long sabatical from ham radio, but, as many others have
discovered, radio somehow gets into the blood stream. At the encouragement of
another dear friend, Charlie KA1DBS, I got back into the hobby in 1998 and was
able to get my father's callsign, WA1TJB, which I now proudly and lovingly use
as a memorial to him.
Ham radio will always be in my heart -- and twiddling the dials will always be
a joy.
73,
Gary
WA1TJB
----- Original Message ----
From: Kelly Jones <kjo...@virtualcohesion.com>
To: dx-chat@njdxa.org
Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2009 8:27:35 AM
Subject: [DX-CHAT] Most memorable QSO
Hi Guys -
I was thumbing through an old box of QSL cards the other day and
reminiscing about some of the QSOs that where in there. It's pretty
amazing how we can look at a QSL card and it brings back the memories of
working that station.
I thought it might be interesting to wrap this into a future column of
WorldRadio. If you have a memorable DX QSO, I'd like to hear about it.
What made it memorable for you? Did you sit in the pileups for hours?
Did you happen to catch a rare DX station CQing before he was spotted?
Did you work somebody famous (JY1 comes to mind). Anything that sets
the QSO apart from others is what I'd like to hear about. And if you
happen to have a QSL card for the contact, it would be icing on the cake
if you could forward that as well.
For those that are not aware, WorldRadio magazine was sold to CQ this
past November. With the sale, WR was transformed into an online
magazine and is now free to anyone. The first online issue was
"published" about a week ago and can be found here:
http://www.cq-amateur-radio.com/WorldRadio.html.
See you in the pileups!
Kelly - N0VD
WorldRadio DX Columnist
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