The very early days of spark and battery radios were
not mine to enjoy until one day in 1926 when a trip to the local library
turned up an interesting book called "Home Handicraft For Boys".
Having been introduced to miniature steam engines and electric trains at
an early age, it was challenging to read an article describing a one tube
broadcast band type receiver.
Immediately the scramble was on to find or make the
parts to start. The old oat and pepper boxes were procured and duly coated
with shellac to provide some rigidity. 75 turns with three taps provided
the grid coil and this was tuned with a shaky variable condenser. The
pepper box was wound with 30 turns on the 2 inch form and rotated inside
the larger container on a pair of stove bolts, thus providing the
feed-back or "tickler" as duly described.
Fixed condensers were quite difficult to fashion, but
the article suggested the use of several layers of cigarette box silvered
paper and waxed paper rolled many times, so this was done. Now for the
scrounged socket and an old UV200 tube and we were almost finished. Our
local BELL CANADA plant threw out perfectly good dry cells after they were
in operation for so many hours. Jack Bolton, VE3LH, and I were their best
customers and the batteries were collected regularly. They were the large
size and provided both "A" and "B" voltages (5 and 45)
and they worked admirably.
The big day arrived but with nary a whisper from the
borrowed headphones. We lived next door to Roy Chappell, who, seeing me
stringing up an antenna asked if I were interested in radio. It turned out
that he had been for some time and he offered to help. The removal of my
home-rolled condensers and the substitution of the new mica types worked
wonders and in rolled WLW, KDKA, and WJR in fine fashion. Roy later held
the call VE3AUE for many years, but is now deceased.
The construction of many more one tubers, then 2 and 3
tube sets followed and the latter eliminated the necessity of using the
fish bowl to entertain our family. These were all constructed breadboard
fashion with foil glued behind the wooden front panel to help eliminate
hand-capacity effects. Shortly Short Wave sets made their appearance and
the famed "Junk Box" one tube set was constructed with
marvellous results. The coils were wound on the base portion of a defunct
tube and simply plugged into a socket. A set of four covered the range of
80 to 20 meters or slightly below and this covered the frequencies used by
both amateurs and foreign broadcasting stations.
In 1928 we went to high school, joined the school
cadets and also the non-permanent militia. It was at the local armouries
that signalling was offered and learning the International Morse Code was
a first priority. Naturally we couldn't wait to become a ham and didn't.
Our first set was a self-exited oscillator with a 112
tube, followed later by the 71A. CW was excellent and loop modulation with
a carbon mike was used and produced strong signals across town to Fred
Hammond VE3HC and Jack Bolton, then VE3IO and now VE3LH in North Bay.
Ralph Bartlett did a little ghosting too and we worked
him with another new rig using push-pull 45's and a 250 modulator. He had
a similar outfit but inserted the carbon mike in the antenna lead. Ralph
later became VE3AO and is now VE3BJX. Jack Bolton, Fred Hammond and I took
our tests in Kitchener and were granted a temporary licence each in 1929.
A full licence arrived in 1030 and a certificate of proficiency in 1931.
The 1930s were mainly spent on 80, 40 and 20 CW with
new transmitters being constructed every few years. By 1938 we had
purchased our first commercial receiver made by the Howard Company and
with band-spread tuning no less. During this mostly lean time frame we
were helped immensely by the late Len Hammond and to Fred and Len I owe a
great debt of gratitude for their expertise and many donations of parts,
transformers and much more.
1939 saw Germany sweeping through many countries and it
was then that all the Guelph hams got together to brush up on their code
and theory, just in case. Sure enough, it happened in September and this
brought about a shut-down of ham activities and a rush to join up. By this
time I had spent some twelve years in the army signals and knew I must do
my part.
Puss Valeriote joined the air force (VE3DSC) in 1940
followed by Crawford Robinson (VE3YH), Ralph Bartlett and myself in late
1940. We arrived at Manning Depot in Toronto in January 6/41 and all four
of us served in the RCAF or RAF but in various war zones. We were all
chosen to learn Radio Direction Finding (RDF) which was eventually called
RADAR (Radio Direction and Ranging) when the United States entered the
conflict.
My lot was with the RAF on loan for the duration and
after a brief stay in England and Scotland our Radar unit was sent to
Singapore. This unfortunately fell when we were two days sailing away and
so we landed in Batavia, the then capital of Java. This proved to be short
lived also for Japan was now in the war and was most successful in their
early start. We left Java after three weeks and arrived in Colombo, Ceylon
where we stayed til 1945. We arrived back in Canada in May of 1945 with
our discharge following in August of 1945. Radio activity was commenced
again in 1946 and we have been active since that time, especially so for
the past fifteen years.
Present equipment is the Tempo 2020 transceiver on the
low bands and two 2-meter units to keep in touch with local affairs. Out
TH6DXX triband beam, plus a 1200 watt linear ensures our being heard in
most parts of the world.
Our greatest thrill, however, is still Field Day and we
have tried to emulate the late Fred Holm, VE3SM, who was a great friend to
all hams and a past president of our Guelph Club. A special hello to our
coffee club members in Kitchener/Waterloo/Cambridge and Guelph. You must
join these fellows when you retire and become a Professional Loafer.
* LANG MAY YER LUM REEK and 73.
Sincerely,
Gord
---------------
J.G. MacPhail VE3IH
* Long may your chimney smoke
