 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||
|
|
 Previous: Asian Radio Amateurs Bridging Communication Gap following Tsunami | ![Next (later) Story](/images/sty-up.gif "Amateur Radio "Saved Lives" in South Asia"){kind=small} Next: Amateur Radio "Saved Lives" in South Asia |
By Alan Eshleman, K6SRZ
December 29, 2004
As the still-fascinating logbook of W6BRO demonstrates, "there's something about the act of hand-logging..."
 Figure 1--Detail of the W6BRO log from 1928 and 1929. Note that W and K prefixes first appear in 1929. |
I keep a paper log of the day-to-day operations of my station. It's not that I have anything against computers. I use computer logging for contests. I'd be lost without it. Of course, every once in awhile I'll forget another ham's name while he remembers mine because he sees it on his computer screen while I'm frantically flipping pages. There's something about the act of hand-logging that I like. A hand log can be a kind of ham radio scrapbook, and a special pleasure to read many years later.
In the preface to the 1931 edition of the ARRL logbook--"On Keeping a
Log"--the late ARRL Communications Manager F. E. Handy, W1BDI, put it this way:
"Carefully kept logs tell a complete story of communication achievement, one
that becomes increasingly valuable historically and likewise more valued for
the cherished memories of worthwhile amateur operation that it will recall to
you as the years go by."
 Figure 2--Twenty-six year old Charles Hill at the station he built at his home in Los Angeles. |
I saw Handy's words at my 60th birthday party. My cousin, who knew of my passion for Amateur Radio, brought to the party the Amateur Radio log of her late uncle Charles Hill, 6BRO and, later, W6BRO/W6DRO. Hill operated from his home on Fedora Street in Los Angeles. The entries in the log span a period from 1925 to 1937.
The format of the ARRL logbook in those days lent itself to being a scrapbook. Unlike today's paper logs, the spine of the old log was on the left and the columns for data ran parallel to the spine so that when the log lay flat on the table the left-hand pages were blank, while the right-hand pages had the familiar columns for time, date, call sign and frequency. The ARRL logbook sold for 40 cents or three for a dollar "postpaid anywhere."
Charles Hill's log is a treasure of photos, diagrams and marginal notes conveying the romance and excitement of ham radio as it was nearly 80 years ago. The log includes neat schematics of all the equipment he built. Some of the schematics are crossed-out with red pencil lines and a note of the date on which the equipment was dismantled.
Hill's first entry in neat longhand reads:
| Log 6BRO Receiver: Weagants tuner, Detector, and two stages A. F. amplification. Transmitter: Five watt tube in crystal Hartley circuit. Plate supply chemically rectified A.C. Antenna: Thirty foot single wire vertical. C.P. [counterpoise]: Fan, three wires 18 ft. long. Both antenna and C.P. porcelain insulated. Ground: Buried metal, water pipe. |
And then in longhand blue ink the note: "This log begins on June 29, 1925. Transmitter has just been tuned to forty meters for the first time."
And with that, at 1853 Pacific Standard Time, Charles Hill called CQ.
At 1857 he logged his first contact with 9BKR. Later and further down the first
page there's a contact logged with 6AIV with the notation "we discussed the
earthquake."
 Figure 3--Hill's second logbook, including QSOs from 1925 to 1931 that were probably transcribed from another volume. |
Almost two years later, in February 1927, Hill filled the blank page with this brief tale:
Was talking to a YL by land phone, and she said the broadcast stations had shut down because of an SOS. So I signed off in a hurry and listened to 600 meter traffic on my honeycomb coil (long wave) receiver. And what a mess on 600!! Nearly every ship I heard was trying to QSO the ship in distress (she had gone aground at San Nicolas Island. I didn't log her call).
Some time later I heard her say that she had pulled off by her own power and was afloat again, and that she would proceed on her own course. Speaking of QRM, it certainly existed then on 600 meters.
The entire procedure was very interesting.
For each year spanned by the log, Hill pasted his entry ticket to the ARRL Southwestern and Pacific Division convention. There are also annual membership cards for the Amateur Radio Research Club, and an official windshield placard from the 1931 Fiesta de Los Angeles, where Hill helped provide communications.
 Figure 4--Detail of the W6BRO log showing a receiver power supply built in 1936 and dismantled 13 years later. |
In early 1929, the domestic calls starting with only a number have given way to Ws. On February 22, 1929 Hill logged a contact with W6DQO with the notation "my note near DC, steady."
In April of 1930, Hill posed for the photo that accompanies this article. On April 6 he notes his first QSO on the 14,000 kc band with W6FE. Later that year he notes that he is operating from the ARRL booth at the "radio show."
In March of 1934 he notes another disaster at sea: "W6BMO came to tell me that a BC station had announced that the British freighter Sacramento Valley was afire in mid-Pacific. We listened on commercial and ship frequencies until 2115, but heard nothing of it."
On August 2 of the same year, Hill notes that his "extra-first class operator's license expired today. Accidentally allowed to expire without being renewed."
On Labor Day 1936 he noted:
This being the last day of the National Air Races, I called
for W6DDX and drove to Municipal Airport (formerly known as Mines Field). We
were not interested in the meet itself, so we went in the morning to avoid the
worst of the traffic [apparently nothing has changed in Los Angeles traffic].
We skirted the field and waited at the pylon nearest El Segundo until W6NAT and
another operator, W6OEF, appeared and set up two five meter transceivers...we
waited until communication was established with the HQ station, then came home.
|
The last entry is dated December 9, 1937. Pasted on the facing page is a ticket to the Los Angeles Amateur Radio Club picnic of May 16, 1937 with a handwritten note: "I was present for a few hours in the afternoon, and umpired bases in a baseball game between teams representing 'CW' and 'Phone.'"
Interestingly, though the last QSO is logged in 1937, there is a ticket to the 1940 ARRL Pacific Division Convention.
Hill did work some DX, all of it on 40 meters (still my favorite DX band from here on the West Coast). The log shows QSOs with K7 (KL7 today), YV and VK.
Hill began his ham radio career at age 19. He was a young man with a passion for Amateur Radio. And he kept that passion for the rest of his life. Hill worked all his life in the insurance business, save for the Second World War when he served in North Africa. When he died in 1994 at age 88, there was still ham radio gear in his room at a Southern California retirement home.
Charles Hill was never famous for his Amateur Radio activities. He had a modest station with a modest antenna, he built all his equipment, and most of the entries in the log are QSOs with other Californians. There are probably fewer total QSOs in the log than I make in one contest weekend. But when I page through the log--and especially when I look at the photo of the 26 year old Hill seated at the station that he built from scratch--I find a true story of communication achievement.
Hill's log has inspired me to include even more detail in my own paper logs. It makes me smile to think that some ham of the future might pause in his pursuit of the Worked All Planets award to read my quaint scribblings about "tribanders" and "rtty" and that ancient language known as CW.
Alan Eshleman, K6SRZ, was first licensed as KN6SRZ in 1956 when he was 12 years old. He was inactive from 1962 to 1996. His major interests are DXing and contesting, with an emphasis on CW. In April 2004 he participated in the T33C Banaba DXpedition as team physician and CW op. Alan is a practicing physician (internal medicine) and Chief Medical Editor for the Kaiser Permanente Health Plan Members' Web site. He is a member of the Northern California Contest Club, the Redwood Empire DX Association and the East Bay ARC.
| Previous: Asian Radio Amateurs Bridging Communication Gap following Tsunami | Next: Amateur Radio "Saved Lives" in South Asia |
