Hi Ed!

 EV> I learned about Ham Radio in the Autumn of 1956 and hadn't heard
 EV> about SSB until a few years later.

I started down the radio trail at around 10 years of age in the 4th grade
here in College Station, Texas.  I could read at 3 years of age and in the
second grade I convinced my Dad to buy me a crystal set with the little arm
and wire on it plus get me a little headphone set.  I wound my first coil
on a Quaker Oatmeal box and stunned my Dad when I let him hear WTAW-AM here
at Teas A&M on 1150Khz on it!  WTAW for (Watch The Aggies Win) in 1929
- one of only six "W" call signs West of the Mississippi River.

But he was REALLY stunned when I let him hear WOAI in San Antonio from that
same crystal set 150 miles away, grin.  My Uncle Bill Schuster, at that
time the major competitor to Allied Electronics, gave me a 78 RPM record
set that taught people CW and I learned it from them.  From which came my
original call WN5WQN in 1952.  The FCC then created the Extra Class
license.  My Dad took me on a summer vacation to Erie, Pennsylvania to the
Buffalo, New York,FCC Office, where I took the Extra Class in 1953.  Passed
it.  At that time the youngest person ever in the USA to be awarded the
Extra Class and I still hold the call sign W5WQN.  I really have no
interest even to this time in 2012 in anything but CW.  Of interest I am
typing this in the exactly same room in the family house in College Station
where that crystal set was built. I still have the lead crystal with the
cat whisker pointer on it in my archives.

I probably passed one of my most important milestones in my life when from
this historic house here in College Station, I was able to maintain a full
copy contact with a CW friend of mine on 40 Meter CW at the Sunrise line to
Perth, Australia with even down to ONE WATT of power to him in the 1950's! 
Still in the dark, I took my four cell flashlight out into the back yard
darkness that new moon night.  I pointed it up in the sky toward Australia.
 That flashlight had about one watt of a light bulb in it. As I looked
upward into the sky to how far the light beam went, my whole life changed. 
It hit me.  If one watt could bounce up and down off the sky and sea and
get to Perth where even thousands of people could hear me and that
flashlight only went up that far...  I realized just how important that
something far bigger than humanity had to be there and what my mission had
to be to help carry everyone upward that I encountered.  While not telling
them lies, stealing from them, nor cheating them with what I learned.

The family also has rural property here which formally has the licensed
site for W5WQN now out near the Navasota River some 20 miles away.  From
that site I wound up being the only ham in the world ever to apply for an
original ARRL DXCC award with THREE HUNDRED QSL confirmed countries - all
on 40 Meter CW only.  The total now is just at 320 and my hope is that I
can make it to Honor Role only on 40CW before I pass away.  I've worked
enough to make that, but no QSL from a few of them.  And the longest I have
ever waited for a QSL or answer to my College Station mail site is
thirty-five (35) years.  I sent my needed QSL to a contact in Liberia just
before Kiddafi took over.  Never heard from my friend.  35 years later, I
got a QSL from him!  When he got out of prison he got to check his log book
and his QSL was one of those cards that was in that original DXCC
application.

Chasing DX on the Gray Line after these countries in the 1974 era, I got so
tired of fighting that tap, tap, tap every morning or evening that I
learned was the Russion OTH megawatt radar!  I couldn't see why it legally
ought to be in the ham bands.  The hams all over the world hated it.  By
then I was a professional radar engineer as well as other things, having
actually built the first color weather radar at Texas A&M back in the
1950's that one of my mentors, Dr. George Huebner, W5GDK had designed here.
 I thought I might be able to confuse things.  So with a scope and precise
computer system, assembly language and the original HeathKit H89 64K
computer kit I had built, I synced the inbound Woodpecker to my 40CW KW
homebuilt system and my cubical quad array.  I sent TEST, then pinged the
echo back over the poles to the Woodpecker.  Gently sliding my frequency
down toward the Pecker site.  Incoming!  Poof!  In less than two minutes no
more Woody.  When it quit I sent "DE W5WQN" on a little different
frequency to make things legal.  After about a month of this, Woody
vanished from the ham bands and never came back. The hams around the world
were estatic!  But this never surfaced outside of my work for about ten
years more.  When I took the logs, plus the audio recordings for the events
to the monthly FidoNet meetings at Mann's BBQ in Bryan and played the tape
for them to hear.  To the horror of one of the Fido users at that time who
had come to Texas A&M for his degree.  He turned out to be the US
military guy that had attempted to figure out a way to defeat Woody and was
thinking of the same thing back a decade or so!  But when Woody vanished
from the ham bands, they knew they'd been figured out but they never knew
how.  Until then!

Poof!  Here came the USA RF4 jet reconnisance training planes from the
Austin, Texas Bergstrom Air Force Base.  Flying day and night at 600 MPH
over my station site at about 500 feet off the ground using it for training
and surveilance for years after that!  The neighbors never knew why and
they HATED these runs,  And it gets bigger and bigger but no point in going
into all the mess that resulted from this which still goes on one way or
another even today.

I'm now 73 years old.  Still on the air with even far more modern stuff and
way up there in computer programming and real-time professional template
work that is unique to my understanding of life and things.  All based on
that incredible night back in the 1950's.  When I shined that one watt
flashlight up in the sky and realized what life was really all about.  And
what I believe our real purpose here on earth is.

To carry everyone we meet upward and maximize their choices for what to do
in life.  But since I am a human being too, and that has to be my right as
well -I try to do it for them at the same time as I do it for myself.

All because of ham radio.

  -... -.-

Mike Luther - W5WQN and N117C from 1:117/100


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