My first introduction to radio came at an early age. Like most kids born at the beginning of, or before WW2, radio was THE mode of entertainment. We had an RCA console receiver in the living room. I noticed that after sunset, stations from far away could be easily received.

One day my dad was cleaning up the attic. He opened an old trunk and I saw a small aluminum plate with wires attached to it. There were binding posts, a coil and a small silvery rock (galena) mounted in a piece of lead. There were a pair of headphones next to it. I asked my dad about the strange device, and he told me that it was a "crystal set." I was inquisitive and wanted to know what it did and how it worked. After making enough of what might be rightly described as "a nuisance of myself," he agreed to show me how the "crystal set" worked.

He attached a wire antenna and a ground to the crystal set and finally connected the headphones. He told me that the silvery rock was the "crystal". Much later I learned that this "magic crystal" was nothing more than a rudimentary point contact semiconductor diode. Dad then carefully move the small piece of wire, called a "cat's whisker," around on the surface of the crystal until he found the "sweet spot". Like magic, the old crystal set came to life. We lived in the Boston suburbs and WBZ was the one station that came in loud and clear. I was hooked! It didn't matter what program was on at the time. There was something magic about it. The RCA console in the living room had to be plugged into the wall to work, but this thing worked all by itself. To this day, I remember listening to Paul Lavall, and the Cities Service Band of America late in the evening and well after I was supposed to be asleep.

Skip ahead a few years to the mid-fifties. I was about 11 or 12 years old, and I found out that private individuals could actually talk to each other on the radio. I became acquainted with a local ham who lived a block away from me. He was active in what was then the Melrose Civil Defense organization. He invited me to a Thursday night meeting. There was a CD station set up in an old jail cell in the basement of City Hall. They also had a station in each of the public schools in town. I don't remember what equipment was installed in the City Hall station, but I seem to remember that each of the school stations consisted of a National SW-54 receiver and a Harvey Wells Bandmaster Jr. transmitter. Each Thursday a CD net would run on ten meters. For some reason, I did not pursue a license at that time. I was interested and I learned the answers to the questions in the ARRL License Manual, but did not learn the code. I (mistakenly) thought it was too difficult!

Almost 20 years later (newly married and living in an apartment in Connecticut) I was ready to clean out my attic . I found the accumulation of ham gear that I had acquired. I was about to discard it when my wife suggested that I try for my license. She knew that I long had an interest in radio communications. In the fall of 1972 I began to study in earnest. I had to travel back to the Customs House in Boston to sit for my amateur exams. Success! After almost 20 years on the outside, I was a Ham - Advanced Class. I received the call sign WA1RRZ in February of 1973. My first contact was on 28.785 MHz using the transmitter of an old CB set and a Hallicrafters SX-71 receiver tuned to the working frequency. I hung an 8-foot wire out the window, and worked W1JAO. As the crow flies, the distance spanned was probably no more than 5 miles, still it was a QSO and I was thrilled to say the least. Robbie passed away very shortly after that and I never did get a QSL card to confirm my first contact. As they say, the rest is history.

After taking an early retirement from Xerox Corp. in the early nineties, I went to work at the ARRL VEC and remained there until real retirement in 2002. Working at ARRL was a wonderful part of my working career.

Ham radio has been a great source of enjoyment for me ever since. If I had my life to live over, what would I do differently? Study for, and passed my exams in 1953 instead of 1972!

Wayne K. Irwin, W1KI (formerly WA1RRZ)