John: In 1959-1961 I was in the US Navy and stationed at NAS Norfolk, Va. I lived in the ham shack of W4NPT and ran many phone patches on 20 meter SSB for HZ1AB a US Air Force base in Saudi Arabia. Our SSB rig was a Central Electronics 20A with the Command Set VFO, an HQ-170 Receiver, a Johnson Viking Courier Linear Amplifier and a Mosley TA-33 triband antenna..
One evening I received a phone call from the state department requesting that I run a phone patch for a high ranking offical of the Saudi government who was in the US with his daughter who was having surgery. The night of the scheduled patch I established contact with HZ1AB about 15 minutes before the schedule and checked out all the equipment. They were very strong into Norfolk at 2AM. When the call came from the state department we were all ready and started the phone patch. About 5 minutes into the phone patch I looked up to see that my Johnson Courier linear was on fire. Flames were coming out of the top of the cabinet. I stopped the phone patch and ran for a CO2 fire extinguisher to put out the fire. After I got the flames out I removed the linear from the operating position and sat it on the floor behind me. I was really worried about botching the phone patch that the state department deemed so important. So I connected the antenna directly to the output connector of the 20A and tuned it up. I called HZ1AB and asked how he copied and he repiled you seem to have the problem resolved because your 20db over S-9. We finished the phone patch in about 15 mor3e minutes with no problems and after I had hung up with the state department I told HZ1AB I was using the 20A barefoot and he could not believe it. I was running QRP and enjoying it before it became fashionalble.....Hi Hi. 73 Jim Younce K4ZM K2 SN: 18 _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: [email protected] http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft You must subscribe to post. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, Unsub etc): http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft page: http://www.elecraft.com
