WØRDO

Back when I first got into Amateur Radio in 1978 I purchased a used FT-401B tube type transceiver to operate. Photo shown below.

The FT-401B didn't need an amplifier as it put out about 400 watts when the tubes were in good shape. I spent a lot of hours on this old radio. I never shut it off unless I was going to be off the air for more than a couple of days. It was a drifter when cold and took a long time to settle in so to speak. The antenna I started with was an end fed long wire that stretched from the old two story house out to the barn. It was in the air as high as I could go because of all the tall farm machinery that came in and out of the driveway. When I upgraded to the Yaesu FT-757GX I took the old 401B to my work location to operate CW over the noon hour. I strung a dipole up close to the ceiling for 10 meters and practiced my CW. Across the street from where I operated was our electric utility's generation plant with 8 generators, metering etc. for producing electricity for the residents of Vinton. One day while operating the generation plant manager Marv came over to where I was at and was looking around scratching his head. I asked him what was puzzling him and he said the meters across the street were bouning all over the place leaving a messy trail on the paper chart that they recorded the electric load on. Well, that was the end of my CW from work over the noon hour. He said he had been looking for weeks trying to figure out why it only happened over the noon hour on Monday through Friday. We both had a good laugh about the mystery but I ceased  messing up his charting. Marv was a great guy to work for and has since passed away but I still remember him.

Page 6 (last page) is all about the antenna farm I have, so read on if you are still interested.

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