The girl on our cover this month is Dorthy Hicks, K0BRZ, who lives in
Omaha, Neb. Dorthy is shown operating at WRL's demostration ham shack
in Council Bluff, Iowa. Although she would eventually like to have a home
setup that is as elaborate as the one shown, Dorthy's home station is a
little more modest - a Johnson Viking "Ranger", a WRL tri-band beam, and a
National NC-300 receiver. She does most of her rag-chewing, usually about
three hours worth a day, on 10 and 15 meter phone.
Dorthy really comes from a hamming family. Her husband, Curt Hicks, is
K0AMM. He is president of the Ak-Ser-Ben Radio Club and is very active in
local Civil Defense affairs. Much of his hamming is with a mobile rig
consisting of a 10-meter Subraco transmitter and a PMR-6 Multi-Elmac
receiver. Paul, one of their two sons, received his Novice ticket when he
was 11. His call is KN0GZJ.
Dorthy took her Novice and General Class training at World Radio
Laboratories' code classes. Her son was also trained here. Novice training
has been going on here for the past several years. During last year,
approximately 300 received their licenses and Leo Meyerson, head of WRL,
expects that almost double this number will receive their licenses this
year. As a matter of fact, the last group of trainees (some 86 in number)
was so large that the group had to meet at one of the local schools for
adequate room.
The ham shack shown on our cover has been set up for the convenience
of customers who wish to keep a schedule while passing through or simply
for them to keep up on their hobby by seeing and using the latest ham gear.
Equipment is changed reguarly so that over a period of a year, just about
manufacturer is represented. The ham shack is in operation for about two
hours a day and it is also available to Novice operators who don't as yet
have their own stations.
Equipment Shown
In the setup shown, Dorthy is speaking into an Astatic D-104 crystal
mike which is connected to the Hallicrafters HT-32 transmitter (center unit
on desk). A Vibroplex bug is nearby for c.w. operation. The transmitter is
being used here as a single-side-band exciter with its output suitably
reduced by a power reducer network and applied to the r.f. section of the
WRL "Globe King" 500B transmitter (at right). The power of this transmitter
under single-sideband conditions is 720 watts peak envelope power input to
the final. Since the 500B also contains its own exciter, v.f.o., and speech
modulator sections, this unit may be used independent of the seperate
exciter shown here. As such, the "Globe King" may be used as a complete
phone and c.w. transmitter with bandswitching provided from 10 through 160
meters. The plate power input is 540 watts on either phone or c.w. .
The Ht-32 exciter may also be used as a compeletly seperate and
independent lower power standby transmitter. The unit provides single-
sideband, phone, or c.w. operation from 80 through 10 meters. The peak
envelope power input is 144 watts.
The output of the 500B is fed to a High-Gain 20-meter beam througn an
external antenna relay.
Atop the exciter unit are two loudspeakers which are connected to the
two receivers at the left. The upper receiver is the Hammurland HQ-110, a
twelve-tube super-het with dual conversion. Full-dial coverage of the 6 to
160-meter amateur bands is provided. The receiver provides an
Auto-Response feature that lowers the audio passband as the audio gain is increased. Thus the response to strong signals is broad band and to weak signals is narrow band. Other features include crystal-controlled second conversion, oscillator, Q-multiplier, crystal-calibrator, ans seperate linear detector for SSB.
The bottom receiver is the National NC-109, an eleven-tube general
coverage unit tunable from 540kc to 40mc in four bands. A seperate product
detector is used for SSB and c.w. reception. A gang-tuned r.f. stage, plus
two i.f. and two audio stages are used.
The idea of using a pair of receivers is so that a continous civil
defence monitor system can be employed. In this case then, the HQ-110
may be used as the amateur band receiver while the NC-109 may be used
as the monitoring receiver.
Tacked onto the wall behind the equipment are some of the large number
of QSL cards from hams that have been worked from WRL.
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