Hi Slick

Back when I first got into ham radio, I was just a poor widdle kid and
had to home brew my first couple of rigs or get some really old
Eicocraft or abandoned Heath gear for the shack.
My first receiver was a simple HR10B if I have the number right and I
had home brewed a simple 40/80 meter single tube transmitter.
I saved up my money from working after school and built an HW101,
which I still owned up until only a few short years ago.

The only SWR meter I had was one I picked up at a swap fest for 5
bucks. I think it was originally made for CBer's but covered all of
the HF spectrum, but also could only handle up to around 10 watts.

My first antenna's were simple dipoles, and because I could only
afford one length of coax I connected all of my antennas spider
fashion without a balun (didn't even know what one of those were back
then). But fortunately, the old rigs had a lot of tolerance for
mismatched loads and high SWRs. Little by little I would get my
antennas in tune.
I enjoyed CW so much that I spent almost 20 years using nothing but CW
on HF, having never once plugged a microphone into my HW101 back then.


After I learned to drive, I even ran CW in my car, using a military
code key that clipped to my leg with a large clamp designed for that
purpose. I wish I still had the abilities I had back when I was a
bubble gummer! CW was just like talking to me, I heard the words not
the individual letters, never had to write anything down.

Then I got sick and was out like a light for over a week, had caught
that darn Hong Kong flu virus, which was bad enough, but about a week
after that I was hit with Encephalitis which caused a large memory
loss and I have had periods of decreasing epileptic seizures ever
since. They are now about 8 to 10 years apart and mild, but wipe out
small parts of recent memory.

After surviving the Encephalitis attack, CW was as strange to me as it
would be someone who never ever heard it before. It was a long hard
road to learn it all over again, and it gave all of those I normally
talked with on CW a chance to get their come uppance by getting even
with me by using higher and higher speeds. I never regained my
ability to hear the words as plainly as before.

A number of years later, long after marriage, kids and eventually
buying a home, a mild seizure caused my engineerings skills to
deteriorate considerable, but at the same time made learning
electronics a snap. Things at work were virtually over my head and I
left that engineering companies employ and went to a company where I
worked my way into chip level repairs in their electronics division.
Everything just came natural to me, almost like I knew it my whole
life. There was not a circuit board problem that I couldn't fix.
Then after working there for about 4-1/2 years, I got hit with another
seizure, this one a little rougher than the last.
The boss liked my work and held my position open for me. I went back
to work, but wouldn't accept any pay until I could get back into the
swing of things. I tied up a station for almost three months and
could not grasp anything. Even trying to repair a simple analog power
supply was far beyond my capabilities and I just wasn't getting
anything back. So I left and got back into something I had done from
my youth, and for the rest of my life had stayed away from anything
learned beyond the age of 18, as I never forgot things from back then,
except the CW from my first sickness.

I was working in electronics when I designed the antenna's I placed on
my web page, they were good designs and worked great. I could run
with the best of them in describing the hows and whys these antennas
performed so well for me. But along with my memory loss in
electronics, also came my memory loss regarding these antennas, other
than I know they worked. I can look at my calculations and formulas
and just go duh, having no idea what they mean. It's very frustrating
to say the least. Makes one look like a blithering idiot most of the
time, especially when you talk to someone you had given excellent
advice to years earlier and now you can't even tie a shoelace so to
speak!

My web pages went unchanged for years because I couldn't remember how
to access them or write the changes in .html, had to learn that all
over again too! A royal pain.

Although you don't hear about it much, there are about 1 in every
10,000 who have the same types of problems I do, and about 1 in every
1,000 who suffer from the same illness, just affected in different
ways, like loss of large or small motor skills, temporary deafness,
temporary blindness, that lasts for months or in some cases
permanently, etc.

I have been one of the fortunate ones if you view it in a certain
light. I may forget everything, but something else has always seemed
to take it's place and be so sharp that it becomes natural to me. The
downside is, you have to change jobs every few years. So I decided to
work for myself, that way I wouldn't disappoint another employer down
the road who came to count on me. I've tried, but I just can come to
firing myself, hi hi.....

TTUL
Gary