Congrats, Gene, Your post reminded me and I remember the feeling well. It was in the mid 50's. I had a WW2 surplus Hammarlund Super Pro receiver but it only covered 3 to 20 MHz. For 160 I used an old multi-band "living room console" radio that I modified to give me some bandspread adjustment. That worked fine for the AM phone contacts I made using my crystal controlled pair of 6L6's and a 200 foot longwire 15 to 20 feet up in two crabapple trees. I could hear CW stations keying the noise but there was no beat frequency oscillator to produce readable code. So one evening I borrowed the plastic AC/DC radio from my mother's kitchen, took it down the basement and sat it on the old console cabinet. I proceeded to tune the kitchen AM radio so as to beat its local oscillator with the incoming CW stations on the old console. It was a task to chase stations with the two radios, which drifted in opposite directions and jumped around in response to line voltage changes. Nevertheless, I managed to work a VE1 that evening. The thrill of doing that was really exciting. And to top it off, Stew, W1BB made note of the contact in his next issue of the 160 Bulletin. Here's wishing you as much enjoyment on TopBand as I have had in the last 58 years. 73, Barry, W9UCW _______________________________________________ UR RST IS ... ... ..9 QSB QSB - hw? BK
