My Greatest
Radio Thrill
To W8PGL goes the $5 00 award forthe most interesting letter on the subject his greatest thrill in radio.
“I’VE got lots ofkick out of ham radio working DX from all corners of the earth, and it wasquite a kick working my first ham station. But it was not until the Ohio Riverwas demonstrating its mighty destructive power during the great flood that Igot my first real thrill.
“Here’s how ithappened: W8PGL at that time was located ten miles east of Portsmouth, Ohio, inthe river valley. It was after three days and nights of continuous operationhandling only emergency messages for food, clothing, and necessities, sincethis station was the only outlet for communication to the out-side world forthree small towns. All telephone and telegraph service was wiped out during thefirst day of destruction, in fact, it was possible to get out of these townsonly by boats and one or two small hill-side roads that were made.
“On the fourth day ofoperation, about 8 am, our a.c. power failed. Messages began to pile up; foodwas getting low. The local doctors were there with messages for medicine andwere also in need of a surgical nurse.
“All of my equipmentoperated on a.c. power. I had no time to lose. I made up my mind to be back onthe air so I could get rid of my traffic. I got in touch with the local ruralpostman and asked him if he could help us locate a power supply somewhere inthe district. He was more than glad to help so we started looking and we werepretty much disgusted for awhile.
“We then were told by afarmer that his neighbor had a plant that he thought was an a.c. plant. To ourdisgust it turned out to be a d.c. 32 volt plant. We were about to leave whenthe farmer told us he had a small converter if it would do any good. To mysurprise it was a small Essco converter 32-100 ac. We lost no time in gettingback to our shack with it. The men who helped out around the shack secured sixcar batteries from different automobiles and by 2 :00 p.m. I was turning on myreceiver to see if it would operate it. It worked perfectly. I heard stationscalling me and they were wondering what had happened.
“The next thing was to getthe transmitter to operate. I switched the power over to the transmitter andturned it on. But nothing doing. It would just barely light up. There were onlya couple things left to do. Build another small transmitter or overload theconverter by putting more storage batteries on the input and try it that way.
“We all got in a huddle inthe shack and decided to try over-loading the converter. We put cracked ice onthe bearings and turned her on. Everybody was excited. We were taking a bigrisk on losing our power supply. The little converter hummed quite a bit. Thetransmitter was given a little time to warm up because it didn’t light tonear full brilliancy. The send switch was turned on. The antenna meter justmoved up slightly. I knew it was working, but could I raise anyone?
“I called an emergency callto any station that could hear me, at the same time explaining that I wasoperating on auxiliary power and that they would have to call me for about 5minutes in order for me to change the power supply from the transmitter to thereceiver and that the receiver would have to warm up.
“It seemed as though thereceiver would never warm up. The room was packed with people, but one couldhave heard a pin drop they were so eager to listen. I tuned the band and heardno one calling. I tuned over again and close to my own frequency was W3FJU atAllentown, Pa., calling me and calling all stations near my frequency to standby because I was operating on auxiliary power and it was hard to understand myvoice and that I was in trouble. They stood by and then W3FJU stood by for me.I gave all my messages to them and they informed me that they would send meanother power supply as soon as they possibly could. However, the littleconverter did the trick. Food and supplies that were ordered were soonarriving.
“I saw the farmer a coupleof months ago and he said the little converter was working as well as ever.
“If I ever get a biggerthrill out of radio, bigger than this one, I am afraid I would never survive totell about it.’