Amateur Radio… A Hobby For All Seasons
Over the course of our 75th anniversary year, we have occasionally brought you personal stories of readers for whom amateur radio has had a big impact on their lives and careers. Here’s one more, but with a twist … frequent CQ contributor Stew Gillmor, W1FK, shared this story of how ham radio helped shape his career back in our July, 1980 issue! We’re reprinting it here as this month’s “CQ Classic,” followed by an update from Stew on the 40 years since! – W2VU
I first became interested in radio about 1947 as a Cub Scout, when I got a Morse Code buzzer and built a crystal set. Later, as a Boy Scout, I built a three-tube regenerative receiver and earned a radio merit badge. While working on the Scout badge I learned something about the existence of amateur radio. It seemed very exciting to be able to talk to other persons around the world from your own room. One day my dad told me that his cousin Charles, who lived in Independence, Missouri, was an amateur operator (WØHKC). I was an eighth grader at the time and my first visit to cousin Charles’ shack was like a fantasy vision. His car had a mobile rig, and his basement study seemed to be full of exotic gear, including a “bug” key, a chrome-plated microphone, and several radios with more meters and dials than I had ever seen.
The result of this visit was that one Saturday morning I went from my home in Grandview, Missouri down to Burstein-Applebee Radio on McGee Street in Kansas City. There I bought the ARRL “how to” manuals—”How to Become a Radio Amateur,” “The Radio Amateur’s License Manual,” and “Learning the Radiotelegraph Code”—which cost 25¢ and 50¢ in those days. Armed with these I studied the code and radio theory and tried to listen to code on our RCA Victor record player and radio console. Unknown to me, one Fall day in
