(formerly WN0RXE, 1976, WB0RXE, KY0J, WB5L) As I started my senior year of high school, I checked in to a class given at the city community center by local hams for the novice license.  We lived on a farm outside of Lawrence, KS and the Douglas County Amateur Radio Club…

I came along just shortly after the WN were discontinued.  My mom was actually getting her ticket.  She is now since passed.  She was sitting our kitchen each evening when her mentor would come over and help her with the code portion of the test.  Every evening it was one…

(formerly WN4GTP, 1976)

(formerly WN1YIU/AK1YIU) I started out as a Novice in 1976. I remember how thrilled I was to pass the test, then receive my license in the mail, and then finally to make my first contact, which I remember like it was yesterday. I made my first DX contact on a…

(Formerly WN5VSS, 1976) My Novice period started out exciting and only got better. I received WN5VSS in August 1976. I retained this call for almost 2 weeks (never even getting on the air yet) before the FCC sent me WB5VSS. My first rig was a Swan Three Drifty. That rig…

(Formerly WN2FKS, 1976; WA2FKS, W3KI) I learned about ham radio from my dad. He wasn't ever (and still isn't) a ham, but he had a ham friend back in the 1950s, and had bought a Hallicrafters S-40B back then. The radio still worked in the late 60s and early 70s…

(Formerly WN5RMQ, 1976) I began in Amateur Radio by participating in a Novice license class that was held in the Houston area by the Twin Counties Amateur Radio Society, during the fall of 1975. The club met on Houston's northwest side, initially in the meeting room of a Bonanza steakhouse…

(Formerly WB5ZKR, 1976) My path to amateur radio was a long and torturous one.  Sometime in 1972, at age 13, I discovered SWLing, and by the summer of 1973 I wanted to become a "HAM". But, I didn't see any way in the world that I could ever actually use…

(Formerly WN6PTC, 1976) I was the Executive Director of the American Red Cross Chapter in Manitowoc, Wisconsin having returned home in 1972 after a good many years of wandering foreign lands as a Red Cross Field Director in the Services to the Military Program operated by the American National Red…

(Formerly WN6PTC, 1976) [Editor's Note - Above, the Jet Propulsion Lab Amateur Radio Club, W6VIO, has captured John Yasuda, WN6PTC, now WB6PTC's first novice QSO. John was visiting JPLARC and operating its special events station N6V, on the ocassion of celebrating a successful Viking space probe.  John had only recieved…

(Formerly WB7NXH, 1976) I was first introduced to ham radio by a friend of the family in 1968. Jack Willie WB9BIK now KC3KU.  He let me talk to a ham in the pacific on SSB. I was hooked. After that I read every book on ham radio and electronics I…

(Formerly WN5TEK, 1976) I was a Novice in 1976 and my first contact was a longtime ham in Florida who did not QSL any more.  Was only a novice for about a month before upgrading so I did not stay on CW very much.  I did make 20 wpm to…