CONTINUED: YL

The Thundering Brass Busters Amateur Radio Club met down in the village, upstairs over a bar.  Through the evening members huffed up and down the stairs for re-fueling.  To get a quorum for a vote, the secretary often had to run down and grab a few Thunder Busters.  

Expecting only geriatric old men, Gloria hoped none would croak during her visit. She didn’t plan to utilize her mouth-to-mouth training on anyone over twenty-five.  Death was still a stranger to her, except for times when she thought of killing the old man.  Like the day he saw a ham license plate on the car in front of them.  He tapped out CQ on his horn a few times until the man ahead of them pulled over and walked back to their car and swore at them.  Dad said the rude fellow was surely an AM phone man.

At the meeting she met 4 or 5 young college men who had recently joined the club.  They were very taken with her.  She signed up immediately, after hurriedly borrowing the dues from her father.  She made a firm resolution to learn HamSpeak when the boys stood nearby and began to use the Q code while staring at her.

“Hey, Robert,,” said the taller young fellow, “why don’t you QSY over to my QTH tomorrow and we can QSO about this FB YL here.”

On the way home she told her father there was no reason why the club couldn’t have dances and maybe a formal dinner with decorations and a band at the end of the year.  It was possible  many young wives might want to join, she said, and all the old men with nothing to do could provide baby sitting for the toddlers, but not downstairs near the beer coolers.

He sighed.  “QSL,” was all he said.

That was a year ago.  Now Gloria has her Extra license, sends and receives at 40 words per minute.  She has dated most of the Novices.  She’s cancelled her dream to become a Broadway understudy and next year will instead head off to Carnegie Mellon to pursue a degree in Applied Physics and Engineering.  During her summers off she’ll sleep late in the morning and stay up half the night DXing for countries far and wide.  She can spell each one of their names.  Dad is still trying to get the DX-20 to work.

Left to Right, Top to Bottom: Central Electronics 20A Multiphase Exciter (or expensive QRP transmitter,)  the tiny McMurdo Silver 701 Atom X Transmitter with an 807 final;

the famous Drake 2B receiver, the Heathkit DX-20 50 watt transmitter.  Beneath the Drake 2b is an MFJ 941 antenna tuner.

Copyright David Griffin, Windswept Press, 2016 

Stories and Essays page is at   http://windsweptpress.com/essays.htm

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