Our Home:
My
wife, Tami, and I live in the heart of the Mohawk Valley about twelve
miles NE of Springfield, Oregon. We have a small "gentleman's farm" of
five acres that is comprised of an upper and lower pasture, an older
farm house surrounded by beautiful trees and nice garden/lawn area.
Our Family:
We
presently have two daughters and two sons with EIGHT grandchildren
between them all. It's great fun to have the kids out and they all have
fun riding the horse, the tractor or playing in the pond.
Tami's family is from Wisconsin but moved out to Oregon some forty
years ago. Ransom's relatives are scattered between Idaho and Texas.
We've been here on our place for almost ten years and have no plans to
move. It's wet in the fall, winter and spring but temperate and really
nice in the summer time. Our little valley is so picturesque it's
really hard to imagine being anywhere else.
In the early morning, from our home on the west side of the valley
floor, you can see wisps of cloud move from north to south - and as the
sun peeks up over the eastern hills the cloud dissipates and gives way
to an unusually brilliant sunrise. |
The Radio History:
I can
remember starting in amateur radio not really knowing the equipment
names or what was available. At the time, I was in the Army, stationed
in Ft. Wolters, Texas as a Warrant Officer candidate and learning to
fly helicopters. My friend, John Bednarz, was a ham and we would sit in
the barracks parking lot and DX from his 1966 Chevrolet Impala using a
Halicrafters HA-410 10 meter transceiver. I was fascinated by his
ability to "talk" to Japanese hams using the fifteen watt AM radio and
an eight foot whip antenna mounted on his bumper.
I needed to know the code so I found a key somewhere and used the 60
cycle hum produced by the electric shaver power supply and an old set
of earphones. Pretty crude but I got my first ticket there and began to
enjoy the hobby.
By the time we graduated primary flight school and moved on to Ft.
Rucker, Alabama, I was thinking about a real rig and was given some
kind of tube CW transmitter (don't remember the manufacturer) in a
friend's junk box and actually got it to work. The antenna was a piece
of wire about six feet off the ground strung along the fence behind our
rented home and it WORKED!
I recall a trip to Florida and a brief visit at Grice Electronics where
they were demonstrating the latest in ham technology . . . the SB-34
radio. It was mostly transistorized with three tubes in the final. I
couldn't stand it. We charged it to a card and ended up packing it up
and taking it to Germany (the first real duty assignment) and talked
from there to the states regularly. I still have an SB-34 in my garage.
more . . . |
