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A Hot Bed of Ham Radio Activity!

Speaking of Radio Activity, JFF, (Just For Fun) I operated Field Day yesterday and made one contact on 20M with a station in Oregon using the KWM-1. I snickered a bit as I mused... an old guy running an old radio!

As I did so, I held up my middle finger and saluted that organization sponsoring the event and noted most signals were really down in the mud. The exception of course was the station I worked. How amazing is Cycle 25...NOT!

Afterward I was thinking about the San Diego area which is approximately 200 miles south of me. San Diego is the home of Black's Beach whose southern portion of course is a nude beach ... a real chance to get fully tanned. But more importantly the San Diego Area was a hot bed of amateur radio manufacturing and homebrewing during the 1960's and 1970's.

If you don't really enumerate the manufacturers and products, then you would miss the impact. Likely few of those entities or remnants thereof exist today. But let's make a list.

* SWAN Engineering (Herb Johnson)
* Cubic Corp (Astro and later Swan Models)
* Sideband Engineers (Faust Gonsett)
* Atlas Radio (Herb Johnson)
* Southcom International (Les Earnshaw) 
* Kachina (Les Earnshaw)
* Alda (Alda 103 and Alda 105)
* Transcom SBT3
* Palomar


Atlas 180


Alda 103


SBE-33


Transcom SBT3


Cubic Astro 150



Swan Engineering SW-140

On the homebrew side we have Ernie Mason, W6IQY, and Ed Marriner, W6BLZ, who took an ARC-5, BC-453 Receiver (85 kHz IF) and turned it into a SSB Transceiver. Both lived in the San Diego area. W6BLZ penned many articles for CQ and QST.

It was an exciting time for radio manufacturing in the San Diego area during that time period. In effect many innovations arising from these companies became standard for all ham gear. Small, compact and 100 watts and mostly or all Solid State was the standard. 

So, OK you are still thinking about Black's Beach ... Tubes and Boobs are always a winning combination!

A bit of trivia was the collaboration of Herb Johnson (W6QKI, SK) and Les Earnshaw (ex ZL1AAX, SK). The Atlas radios used circuits developed by Earnshaw's company for use in manpack military SSB transceivers. The Atlas Radios were very successful with over 14000 radios produced and many still kicking around shacks today. I ran an Atlas 180 Mobile in the early 1970's and have one today.


Them that know can make it go!

73's
Pete N6QW

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