The AM Forum

Frank Jones and the Five Meter Liberation Army

Every once in a while I go back and read these great little stories and every once in a while I lose the link to them, which is....

http://www.sunflower.com/~brainbol/frank/

All Frank, All the time, and no ARRL!

73DG

Thanks! -- looks like a lot of good reading. Guess I'll pick one story at random and start.
Re the ARRL, if not for them perhaps the only transmitting you'd be allowed these days would be very official and in the Navy. It might be a very different world. Receiver licenses of all things in the British Empire.

Just a reference to 'Radio' magazine vs. QST...no league text.

73DG

Ok. Read several episodes. Frank expresses the sentiment that you don't need a constant call sign if you can send 30 wpm on a j-38, a jibe at fake ops these days I suppose, and I sort of agree.  ;D  " Liberte, egalite, & fraternite, " the desire for 5 meters notwithstanding.

I remember reading some of these years ago but can't recall where they had their original run....maybe in a link in the Boatanchor mailing list?  A link from the AM Window? CQ? 73?

Remember Diane's uncle telling me about how he was a boot on 5 meters just before WW2 in Rhode Island, apparently there were a lot boots on the band there then, guys running low power modulated oscillators or MOPAs that doubled in the PA with super regen receivers or variants on the circuit used in the 30s military BC-222 Handi-Talkie.

Maybe I should get my Mystery Transmitter ready to work Frank when the balloon goes up.  Looks like it could work there on 56 megs.

Quirky and rather amusing!  Sorry I missed this the first time while Mike was still around.

Many thanks, I'll be dipping back into the list!  b.

They are all good as stand alone stories but they are in order on that link beginning to end.

Great stuff!

Might've been on the Newsgroups, Chris. Rec.Radio.whatever sometime in the mid-late 90s. Think that may be where I met Mike. He was the keeper of the Li'l Lulu transmitter registry and had a deep fascination for the early VHF converters and kits. Had quite a collection as I recall.

Only found out a couple years ago from Pete that Mike had passed on. Sorry to hear, he was one of the good guys. Sent me a copy of the Lulu manual which was all I had for documentation until getting a much nicer copy from Pete recently.

Newsgroups.....now that was the wild west.....

Mike and I had a number of great e-mail QSO's many years ago on VHF stuff and I even met him at least once at Dayton.

Here's a link to Frank Jones's 5 Meter Radiotelephony:

http://w5jgv.com/downloads/5-Meter%20Radiotelephony%20by%20Frank%20Jones.pdf

   Interesting link, thanks. It would be interesting to know more about the radio system he refers to for the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge. That Article has a 1934 copy write, the Bay Bridge was opened in November 1936. I was working in San Francisco in the Fall in 1986, on a Friday night was the 50th year anniversary of the Bay Bridge opening, I stayed in the city that night instead of immediately going home, the fireworks display was the best I have ever seen.