Thinking back to my younger years, I was enthralled by those huge radio towers from the time I was a small child. I have a visual image in my head from childhood: I was riding home in the “rumble seat” of a VW bug, with my parents up front. We were coming home from a place called “Cool Point”, a restaurant on Caddo Lake, in Northwest Louisiana. Somewhere out across the darkness were 3-4 towers with blinking red lights all in rows pointing straight up at the sky. I knew they were towers for our local TV stations. They looked like pillars of a huge gateway to the world or into space.
At age 13 I still had a fascination with towers, although now it was more technical in nature. I would gaze with fascination when I saw the really tall towers, with huge directional beam antennas combing the sky. I often watched while passing them, when riding in the car, just to see if I could catch one in motion, rotating to point somewhere else for a chat.
And while I hadn’t achieved my amateur radio license due to the code requirement, I had done what most other people in the United States were doing at the time. I became a CB Radio operator. The nation was engulfed in the CB Radio craze from about the time I turned 12 until around age 16. I fit right in. And although it wasn’t the same as being a “ham operator”, it was more mainstream and therefore less expensive. I made many friends —usually with people twice my age on the other end of the call- and made a few enemies as well.
Much to my folks’ chagrin, I did finally manage to get that tower with the huge 11 meter beam array at the top. I liked to tinker so my grandfather had his welder at the shop add a hinged plate onto the bottom of the tower. It allowed me to use ropes and pulleys to lay the thing down across the back yard and make my adjustments or repairs.
It was an unsightly thing really. And although it wasn’t that tall (30-40 feet), it allowed me to reach places farther away than the distance I was able to ride my bicycle or motorcycle. At the time that satisfied my communication needs. Even though “long distance” communications weren’t allowed on the 11 meter “citizen’s band”, someone forgot to tell the ionosphere. So whether the FCC liked it or not, there were heavy sunspot days where you just couldn’t help but end up talking to someone 500 or even 1000 miles away with a simple 4-5 watt rig. It was amazing and wonderful to me then, as it is now, thinking back on it.
My parents however held back with their wonder and amazement over my technological addition to our yard. For some reason they didn’t see the “wonder”. And their only amazement was possibly being amazed that I would put something like that on the property. In retrospect, I guess it really was an ugly beast. Thankfully they bit their tongues as parents must do from time to time.
When it’s all said and done, my parents will likely be sainted for all they endured during my CB Radio phase. At around age 15-16 we moved into a much nicer neighborhood. And my radio equipment —having been unused for many months- got packed away in boxes and stored. My folks silently breathed a sigh of relief as my tower and antenna left our driveway on the back of a trailer, after I agreed to sell it to a family friend.
Thanks Mom & Dad. Sorry if I didn’t choose a career as a Radiotelephone Technician after all. But that computer phase I went through a few years later? Spot On!
73,
David