Merrick, NY
Like many hams I was a Short Wave Listener first, and spent many hours tuning around the SW broadcast bands with a National NC188. The photo below appeared in a 1972 issue of a magazine called "Communication World" which, along with articles on foreign broadcast stations (such as "A Visit to Radio Tirana") and handy hints like "How to Build Better SWL Antennas," published pictures of readers in their shacks.
I have to credit my father for getting me into ham radio. Even
though he was not a ham at the time, he used to say "why are you just listening
when you can get your license and transmit?" So I did. Here's my
first ham shack, which featured a Heathkit HW-16. The SWL cards that
filled the wall are gone, replaced by my new collection of ham QSL cards.
If you look carefully on the left, right in front of the HW-16 you can see a the crystals required for novice operation back then. And what's that? A hand-written longbook? Wow...
My primary QTH from my days as a novice in 1972 until 1979 was my
parents's home in Merrick, NY.
The Merrick QTH from the air
Two terrific parents, BTW, who let their son put a TH-3 beam on their roof! That's a TH3 beam below and a CushCraft circularly polarized 2 meter antenna above, which I used for Oscar 7 and 8 contacts. I will never forget the thrill of hearing my own signal coming back - with Doppler shift - from the bird. (Read the whole story here.
My mom freaked out everytime I went on the roof to tend to my antennas, but I was in heaven.
Here we are, me and my dad, Lou - who later earned his General ticket (WB2EZK) - in the shack, circa 1976. By this time we had sold the STAR pair and bought a much more reliable Tempo One transceiver.
Footnote
After dad passed away in 2010 I found his paper logbook and created an electronic version (it was only 486 QSOs so it didn't take that long.) When I reached the last page I was delighted to see that I was his last QSO (I was living in Boston at the time, running a TS-120 from my condo.)
