Comment by dbcurtis

Love the photo of him with the radio. I was trying to identify the radios, but can't quite. I'm going to hazard a guess that the transmitter is a Hallicrafter's HT-44, crystal-controlled, morse-code only transmitter, about 50 Watts out. It looks like the matching receiver stacked on top of it, but I'm not familiar with that receiver. That would have been a pretty common, and fairly nice, beginner's rig in those days.

Somewhere in the family archives is a similarly nostalgic photo of me, circa 1972. My radios were not quite as spiffy. For the most part, each crop of beginners bought the hand-me-down radios from the guys a couple years ahead of us, and handed them off the same way to the next crop. Fond memories. There is something about the smell of a hot, dusty, vacuum tube warming up on a winter evening that is unforgettably sweet.