As a boy in Lockport NY, Niagara County, followed in the footsteps of my brother Mark - WN2GNG, and his best friend Paul WN2GNH - they got their licenses at age 14, in July 1968. Paul's Dad was Al, W8HTX , one of the "Hams at Heath", who proof-built the first Heath Mohawk, Apache, and Sideband Adapter in 1958 in the Heath Benton Harbor Labs. Back then the Heath techs got to keep the gear that they proof-built and Paul inherited many pristine, expertly built Heath items, including the beautiful Apache and Mohawk and SB-10, serial numbers #0001 as they might be called. Al passed away in 1958 when Paul was just 5 years old. When Paul turned 13,  his mentor and church mate W2FAN, helped Paul and Mark to get their novice licenses, and those big Heath boxes came out of storage. In his small bedroom, Paul had those radios lined up across a five-foot oak library desk, and they made a huge impression on Mark and myself. Mark built an HW-16 and I sat and watched and listened all through the hot but fascinating summer of 1968 as Mark worked plenty of short skip in the crowded 40m novice band. Those were great days, maybe the best days of my life.

WN2MCC novice ticket was issued on October 31, 1969. I had just turned 14 and had a Heath DX-60 and HR-10 on the desk. A Hy-gain 18V 40m-10m vertical on the side of the house performed poorly, so a 40m dipole replaced it and we were off and running, had a sunspot peak to help out, too. Had no coax switch or T/R relay, so I used just 22 feet of wire as a receiving antenna - so much the better, I never knew how easily the HR-10 could be overloaded by even nominal strength signals, so a simpler and smaller receiving antenna was just the thing to have - naive and lucky, I was.

I built a Heath HW-101 in August 1971, terrific radio in its day. Upgraded to a like-new Drake TR-4 in 1975, no need to improve on that for many, many years.

In 1978, in college studying electrical engineering, I passed the Advanced Class exam. I was anxiously awaiting that envelope from the FCC, and I called home perhaps every day to check. One day, the answer was yes, and I was told that the addressee as read through that little translucent window on the envelope was - KB2EE. I 'bout fell off my chair - no vanity callsigns back then, that was pure luck. Yeah, I think I'll keep it.

I graduated from SUNY Buffalo as an RF Electrical Engineer and came to Rochester to work for Harris RF Communications. In a small, first floor apartment, my XYL Annette, KD2UZ, attached two Radio Shack 8-foot CB whips to a short 2x4 and u-bolted this big set of 10m rabbit ears to the cast iron railing on the tiny balcony, about 8 feet above the ground, just outside the little dining area. With another sunspot peak arriving at just the right time, Annette worked the world daily on 10m, with our Drake TR-4 and Heath Warrior amplifier.

#1 son Owen is KC2DZQ, in State College, PA. Was immensely proud of him when he got his license after just turning 14.

KB2EE, KD2UZ, Honeywell Thermostat 1985

Lots of vintage gear here, much of which I lusted after as a kid. The main operating desk holds an Icom 761, Tokyo Hy-Power SS amp and Tokyo HP kW autotuner. A recently freed up desk #2 has a Heath Mohawk receiver which I have been using recently with a Drake 2-NT and homebrew tube transmitters. Having fun rotating a large collection of vintage radios across desk #2, a "radio of the month" club, as it were.

The antenna is a multiband doublet. Its length, 42 feet, makes it an Extended Double Zepp on 10m. I feed it with homemade open wire line, Zo ~ 360 ohms, and I match it in the shack on any band 40m through 6m using swap-in lengths of window line which serve as matching sections - a low loss balanced tuner for pennies. Band changing is not fast and not particularly convenient, but it sure is cheap and it feels clever. The doublet is only 15 feet above ground, so not a great DXer, but high enough on 10 and 12 and 15m to work any DX that I hear. In the daytime on 40m, it makes a great short skip antenna and it does perfectly well in the evenings out west. But I have designed a higher, fatter version to be completed this summer - a four wires per leg biconical, 27 feet up, with an outdoor matching section, a custom high performance bead balun, remote relay-selected LC tuning on the mast in a weatherproof enclosure, 9913 coax running to the shack. I originally designed this biconical 40m thru 6m antenna for Paul, W8HTX in Tucson AZ, but I have decided that it is what I really need here for myself! So my implementation will serve as a wring-it-out prototype that should make the W8HTX version a fast and easy job. Paul's site is a small city lot, quite constraining, so his will use just 2-wires per leg, a bowtie, and the outer ends will be angled down to fit it in. SWR's on all bands 40m-6m will be within the matching range of his autotuner.

More pics soon