I always had  a fascination with electronics, radio, and recording equipment. One of the first short-wave radios I listened to was a Hallicrafters S77 short-wave receiver given to me by my father. I used to listen to hams and short wave broadcasts all hours of the day and night. The picture below was taken of me in Yakima Washington in the late sixties at my grandparents house on Lincoln Avenue.

 
 

 Hallicrafters Model S77

 
 

In the late seventies I got interested in Talking back to some of the people I was listening to. The problem I was not patient enough to learn the code required at the time for a Ham License even after my father Jerry Burling (WA7AZL) had taken me to several hamfests in Skagit county. So I settled for the CB (AKA the Children's Band) with my first  CB radio.

 

After several years of operating on the CB I eventually lost interest because my friends moved or just got off the air. In the early nineties I heard the FCC had dropped the Morse Code requirement for the  Technician Class License. I bought a Realistic HTX-202 two meter handheld from the employer I was working for at the time and studied for the exam. I have had several rigs since then, to many to post or count.

I did go to an ARRL Field day and got to make some contacts on the HF band. After that I was hooked and wanted operate on the HAM HF frequencies on the shortwave bands. Don Anderson (AB7V) invited me to his house once a week to learn the code. He got me up to 5 words per minute at which point I went to another test session and passed the 5 word per minute test with very a pathetic copy I had written down.

Don continued to work with me to increase my code copy speed except this time we worked once a week on the air. After several months I finally passed my 13 word per minute code test and a written exam for the General. The next day I picked up the study Guide for the Advanced class license and passed the exam at the next test session a month later

I, at that point, was content to stay an Advanced class licensee. I got on 10 meters to work other operators so they could get thier upgrade.

One night a friend (Mike Soley KJ7TY) of mine who had already gotten his Extra was working the code with me Said " Steve I think you can pass a 20 word per minute test you are there. I was sending code to you at 22 words per minute.". I was skeptical and went to the exam only to fail the code and passed the written test. After failing the code test two more times by one question on each test, I then got irritated and worked stations on twenty meters on a daily basis. After each QSO I would look up the Stations call on QRZ and to my surprise all of them were Extra Class operators. One operator had a Morse code key strapped to his leg while he was driving his car down the freeway in Ohio. I could not believe it geez I had a hard time with code sitting my desk let alone trying to drive a car.

The fourth time was a charm I passed the code test and got my upgrade to Extra just to have the FCC six months later drop the Twenty word per minute code requirement.  Regardless I did satisfy my own personal challenge by passing the code test.

Now I can listen and talk on the Short Wave bands I listened to as a kid, and the radio is more fun too. It is an ICOM 746 original.

 

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