WA7YQA

One day while adventuring around the neighborhood of my childhood best friend (WA3YWU) in Medford Oregon we saw a run down looking shack with all these wires hanging off of it and a large square wire antenna which I later found out was a quad. My friend John said that he thought the man who lived there was a ham radio operator and we should try and talk to him. I was very intriqued and we eventually mustered up the courage to go knock on his door and were quickly invited into his shack. I would consider that man to be our first Elmer as he got us both excited for the hobby, his name was Victor Seeburger (W7VSE Victor Seeburger Esquire). Victor was a airtraffic control operator at the local Medford airport, when not working it seemed Victor spent the rest of his time in the shack and probably to this day was one of the best CW guys that either of us ever met.  Victor never used a microphone that I remember and operated with a very beatup but fine tuned bug which had wraps of solder around it to get it just right for his speed. We spent hours just watching victor operate CW while handling traffic for any one of the nets he was involved with, which I think included one of the MARS groups, he was so good he could carry on a conversation with us and simultaneouly be copying code in his head at speeds that would bogle the mind.

Occaisionally Victor would offer us young boys a cut of plug (which we never tried of course) it was his way of always treating us as equals, he sometimes would play us old civil war songs on his acoustic guitar of which it seemed he knew hundreds. Victor had an old telegraph sounder hooked to his radio output which had a Sir Walter Raleigh can connected to it and he claimed he new the old original code and could read it over the telegraph. It wasn't until recently that I found out he actually did work for Western Union for a period of time in his earlier years and knew the old landline Morse code. There was a net that started as a result of him hooking up with other ex-telegraph operators and they would talk on the air in the orignal code but identify in international Morse and out of that group was formed The Western Amateur Radio Morse Code Network, one of their members was a direct decendent of Samuel Morse W6FZZ,  Samuel F. B. Morse III.   We were so blessed to have known Victor and so many other old Amateur operators. I remember the musky smell of Victors shack to this day mixed with the smell of the plug he chewed and that sweet smell of radios that glow in the dark.

In junior highschool we had a club station which consisted of all Heathkit equipment, and the call was WA7ERX at McLoughlin Junior High School, Medford, Oregon. I have heard it was one of the first Club stations in the country in a Junior Highschool. Our geography teacher Mr. Hoffman (an ex military radio man in WWII) was responsible for the station, and taught us what we needed to know to get our novice licenses. So at the age of 14 I had my first license and was WN7YQA, In that day as you upgraded they changed your call, so two years later after talking all over the world on CW I upgraded to General Class and received my WA7 designation. Even later in life I eventually upraded to Advanced class. 

My first station a Heathkit DX-60 xmtr and NC-300 receiver and a home made QR Switch.

We were fortunate enough to have a school system that was set up like a college in that we had electives in all areas of interest that we could take to satisfy our academic requirements, so we had electronics classes from junior high through Senior high that we could take, and I did. I don't remember there being a club station at our middle high school, but we did have one at our Senior High school and that one was ran by one of my instructors by the name of George Albertson WA7VIZ who ran the audio visual department, we have stayed in touch to this day.

 Other hobbies or interests are Astronomy, Astrophotography, Metal detecting, hunting, shooting ie modern and muzzle loading and camping.

I also like space coms as well as trying to receive current satellite data.