MoreContinued: CONTINUED: Novice

His longest distance contact in his Novice career when the photo was taken was his friend Billy on the other side of town. Billy said Beaver was on the track to winning a Worked All Neighborhoods Award. Beaver took that remark as an acknowledgement of his communications prowess, even though Billy was laughing when he said it.

Mom snapped this picture to send to her college alumni magazine. Not long ago a fund raising hot shot suggested the school’s publication feature photos of alumni children whom the parents thought were geniuses. The school now has enough photos to last until the end of the decade.

Beaver is a smart kid, but not a genius. In two evenings he read the ARRL’s How to Become a Radio Amateur and The ARRL License Manual. He skimmed the Operating Manual.

Billy gave Beaver his 5 word per minute code test. Billy signed the form but calculated Beaver had attained only 4.8. Since anyone aged 21 or over could administer the mail-in Novice written test, Mom took on that task and gave Beaver an unprecedented A++. There is no such score in the regimented bureaucracy of the FCC, of course, but Mom wrote a note across the top of the exam form: “Beaver Beltlupe answered all 10 questions correctly with aplomb and supporting research. One could only sit back and marvel at his grasp of the concepts.” She didn’t mention the help she provided on three of the questions. Nor that Beaver took a lot of breaks and called Billy up three or four times. The FCC examiner may wonder about these things when he opens the mail, but once again he’ll remind himself that mail-in exams were not his idea.

When his uncle gave him the LayFayette HE-10 receiver, which in truth was a kit-built KT-200, the two half moon dials convinced Beaver he had the much vaunted Two-VFO rig. Never having heard of Bandspread, he noticed VFO-B tuned only a very tiny part of the ham bands. When he couldn’t find a socket to plug his mike or key into he realized it wasn’t a transceiver. He was about to store it in the attic when he judged he couldn’t listen to anything on his transmitter. Finally, Mom suggested he might listen on the receiver and talk on the transmitter. This knocked his socks off. He believed the two of them had discovered a radically new concept, separate send and receive boxes.

“Don’t tell Billy,” she said. “You should get the full credit.”

Eventually Beaver got everything running and re-read his Operating Manual. He gave up on the loops and other radiators he had tried. He strung a dipole antenna between the attic windows of the houses on either side of his. The wire antenna loaded far more easily than his house siding had, which turned out to be vinyl and not aluminum. He bought a copy of The Radio Amateur’s Handbook (before it was renamed The ARRL Handbook) and made an effort to read and understand a few basic concepts. He joined an on-air net and learned the rudiments of using his radios so that other amateurs could understand him. Beaver joined a ham radio club and subjected himself to a rash of opinions on technical matters, politics, food choices, home invasion defenses, sex and UFOs, but it didn't take a genius to discern which members actually knew what they were talking about. Those were the hams who said the least and drove the better automobiles.

When he brought his girlfriend home one evening to show her his shack after he had upgraded to a General license, she asked him, “How does it all work?”

The question caught him off guard and brought to mind the first time he had made a contact overseas. It was one o’clock in the morning and the only light in the room came from the radio dials. Outside his window a blizzard of snow whipped around the street lights and traffic had come to a standstill. And in his headphones was a sound he’d never heard before. A slow fist pounding out CQ, CQ, but with an unfamiliar hollow sound, the result of a double or triple skip. So this was DX. He had flipped the switches and responded to the DL ham near Stuttgart.

“So?” said the girl, bringing him back to the present. “How does it all work?”

He briefly thought of all he had learned about Ohm’s Law, resonant circuits, oscillators and the myriad of circuits and devices that made his station work.

Remembering that snowy night and the thrill of sending a signal to his dipole, where it was hurled up through the stratosphere and along the paths of space, depending upon the ionosphere to do its job, he smiled at her and gave her the best overall answer he could summon.

“It’s magic,” he said.

Left to right: KnightKit T-50 transmitter, Lafayette HE-10 receiver (kit version was known as the KT-200,) with HeathKit QF-1 Q Multiplier on top. At a right angle sits the Globe Scout 65B cw and am phone transmitter. Also the famous (or infamous) Astatic D-104 microphone. Atop the Scout is an Allied Radio KnightKit Space Spanner ac/dc receiver, sporting original colors, battleship grey. Later versions featured a face panel of silver and dark grey.

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