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Winter 2006 Issue |
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A Tale
of Two Meters |
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The past: It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. Shades of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, and all that. Seriously, it was early 1974 and I was making good money as a supervisor for AT&T. The Middle East oil embargo was winding down, but there were still spot shortages here and there. It was at this time that I decided to drive up to Amateur Electronic Supply (AES) in Milwaukee and take advantage of a sale on 2-meter gear that they had recently advertised. I took off for AES at 7 AM on a Monday morning, traveling from my home in Hanover Park, Illinois. Under normal weather conditions the trip should have taken no more than two hours, but I ran into a horizontally blowing ice storm en route that made driving nearly impossible. I arrived at AES at about 1 PM and bought an SBE model SB144—a 12-channel, crystal-controlled 10-watt transceiver with an S-meter, which doubles as a power output indicator. Shortly after leaving AES, there was a power failure in the southern Wisconsin area, and I was unable to refill the car’s gas tank for the trip home because of lack of power at the gas pumps. I was driving on fumes on interstate I-294/94 toward home with my heart in my mouth, and I heard on the car radio that electrical power had just been restored to Union Grove, Wisconsin. Luck was with me, as I spotted the Union Grove exit ramp just ahead. I reasoned that if the power was newly restored, there should be gasoline in town. Sure enough, I coasted into the first gas station I found and the station had plenty of gas. The proprietor said that I was his first customer since the power had been restored.
I arrived safely back home just before dark
and installed the radio in my nearly new 1973 Mercury. About two weeks
later the radio was stolen from my car before I had much of a chance to
enjoy it. It was later recovered and turned over to my insurance company,
but that’s another story. It ended up being sold to another ham.
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Photo 1. The broken power receptacle on the SB144 was replaced with a small metal plate and rubber grommet. |
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