1937 ARRL Handbook

A 1937 ARRL Handbook with a distinctive orange cover is now part of the collection. It’s in relatively decent shape for its age, although the cover has become unglued from the spine, so I’ll need to glue it back on at some point.

Front cover of the 1937 edition of the ARRL Radio Amateur's Handbook

The call sign W8NYY is written on the front cover, and on the inside front page is the former owner’s name and call sign, Lloyd H. Miller W8NYY.

A quick Google search turns up a 2-Jun-1978 obituary from the Akron Beacon Journal for Mr. Miller and mentions he was a ham radio operator (W8NYY).

Obituary for Lloyd H. Miller (W8NYY) from Akron Beacon Journal 02-Jun-1978.  Text of the obituary follows.

Lloyd H. MIller, 79, of 9 Wilpark dr., died June 1 at Akron City Hospital.
He was born in Akron and was a life resident of the area.  Mr. Miller retired in 1966 from Goodyear Aerospace with 13 years service.  He was a ham radio operator (W8NYY) and had been a member of various amature (sic) radio clubs.
He is survived by wife, Helen; daughters, Miss Jean Miller, of Akron, Mrs. "Chick" (Nancy) Watkins, Cuyahoga Falls; 2 grandsons, David and Scott Watkins.
Funeral services Saturday 1 PM from the Hopkins Funeral Home, 547 Canton rd., Akron, Dr. Russel AJones officiating.  Burial Holy Cross Cemetery.  Friends may call at the funeral home 7 to 9 PM Friday.

A short blurb in the June 1937 QST talks about a 160m “round-table QSO party” he organized.

On Easter morning, 1937, fifty-two ‘phone stations in thirty states, coast-to-coast, all operating on frequencies between 1955 and 1965 kcs., took part in a “round table’’ QSO party, organized by Lloyd Miller, W8NYY, O.P.S., Akron, Ohio. The stations were selected in advance as con­sistent at W8NYY and were invited by card to participate. Starting at 2 a.m., EST, W8NYY called the roll in numerical and alphabetical order. Each station then called the Round Table for one minute while the rest listened, and after the round each station reported the other stations heard, with signal reports. The party lasted until 6:20 a.m., and a “good time was had by all.” Souvenir QSL’s were sent to all participants.

In a December 1942 QST article, he’s listed as a WERS operator in Barberton OH.

Sounds like Mr. Miller was a fairly active and involved amateur radio operator.

I think it’s always neat to get my hands on stuff like this and be able to find out a little bit about their owners. I wonder what other journeys this book has had between being owned by Mr. Miller and when it entered my collection.

On the air for SKYWARN Recognition Day 2024

I had the 7-10 AM shift with Tom AJ4UQ at the NWS Charleston office for SKYWARN Recognition Day 2024. Tom was already there when I arrived, and mentioned the previous shift was having SWR issues with the HF radio and antenna. Stations were really quiet and they weren’t able to make any HF contacts.

The HF antenna is a ground mounted Butternut vertical. After the sun came up a little more, we went to check out the antenna to see if we could figure out what was going on. Didn’t take long to find the problem.

Broken feed line connection at the base of a ground mounted vertical antenna.

The feed line connection to the antenna had corroded away and was completely broken off. It was a pretty cold day and we didn’t have any tools, so the repair will have to wait for a warmer day.

Without HF, all we had were the VHF DMR and FM radios so we threw out the WX4CHS call periodically and managed a couple dozen or so contacts from across the state through the statewide linked repeaters over the three hours we were there.

The staff at the NWS Charleston office are great, welcoming, and appreciative of the amateur radio operators that volunteer there. Always a fun time operating there.

Etherkit Goodies

Received a nice package of Etherkit goodies from Jason/NT7S today. More fun things to build and play with.

One of the boards he sent was his EtherKeyer Mini along with a KM4CFT 3D printed paddle that he reviewed.

I’ll need to see if I’ve got a spare TRS cord lying around to use with the paddle.

The other board he sent along was a code practice oscillator board (the Etherkit CPO Among Us edition).

These should make for a fun weekend project.

Jason’s got some fun looking things in the works these days. Go see what he’s been up to on his Applied Etherics Substack.

SC QSO Party 2024 results

Just saw that the SC QSO Party 2024 results are available.

According to the results, W4BXC had 115 QSOs, 58 multipliers, 29 counties, scoring 21498 points (including 850 bonus points). Looks like 4 QSOs got busted or something.

That got us to 13th place in the Phone only category.

This year’s SCQP had a total of 406 logs submitted and 27468 QSOs this year.

Next edition of the SC QSO party is February 22, 2025. Looking forward to it.