On Tue, 07 Apr 2009 15:47:04 +0000, Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:

Roger Basford wrote:
I did try to ID the W9WZE operator in the clip - it's not Bill Halligan
- any ideas? One suggestion I had was that he was one of the senior
engineers working for the company. I didn't notice any date on the
captions, so if that is a post-1941 film then the operating session
would have surely been staged, as Ham Radio had shut down, so maybe it
was done by using recordings of the other stations?

Although the ham at the other end called him Bill, if you say it was not
Halligan, I'll take your word for it. A little later in the film he and
another man are identified as Bill Halligan and someone else, whose name
I did not catch.

I assume if you actualy know what Halligan looked like (I don't) you can
tell them apart and if you are careful at listening for names, you can
figure it out.

BTW, did anyone notice the one serious flaw in their design? It was
designed according to the film to work using standard 117 volt household
electricity. A gasoline generator was included as an addon (a trailer)
that provided it.

AFAIK they were never used in combat in a place that had 117 volt AC
power.

I know that Europe had 220 or 240 volt power, what did the pacific areas
have?

Geoff.

If you're invading, you get to say what standard power is.

They may well have sent the thing out with a set of adapters (or just
taps on the mains transformers) for times when reliable power was
available.

--
http://www.wescottdesign.com

On Tue, 07 Apr 2009 12:00:44 -0500, Tim Wescott
wrote:

On Tue, 07 Apr 2009 15:47:04 +0000, Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:

Roger Basford wrote:
I did try to ID the W9WZE operator in the clip - it's not Bill Halligan
- any ideas? One suggestion I had was that he was one of the senior
engineers working for the company. I didn't notice any date on the
captions, so if that is a post-1941 film then the operating session
would have surely been staged, as Ham Radio had shut down, so maybe it
was done by using recordings of the other stations?

Although the ham at the other end called him Bill, if you say it was not
Halligan, I'll take your word for it. A little later in the film he and
another man are identified as Bill Halligan and someone else, whose name
I did not catch.

I assume if you actualy know what Halligan looked like (I don't) you can
tell them apart and if you are careful at listening for names, you can
figure it out.

I'm going a vague memory here, but one of the fellows did look like
Bill Halligan who 10 years later was often pictured in Hallicrafter's
ads. I remember he had a two letter suffix in his call and for some
reason I thought it was W9AN. Someone with a 1950's QST might be able
to see the ads. I believe that Bill Halligan is the fellow who appears
at minute 5:30 or so of part one of the film and I think he is the
fellow on the left with the rimless glasses. Notice how spartan his
executive office is. Two letter suffixes were extremely rare in those
days. You had to be licensed before WW I to get one. There was no
country prefix at the start. I had two mentors in the mid 50's when I
was a young teen with my first license. They told me that right after
WW 1 their calls were 9GI and 9AOF. The guy with the two lettter
suffix got his before the war, the guy with the three letter suffix
got his immediatiately after WW I and always thought he should have
had a two letter suffix. W9GI was the only two letter suffix in our
town. He was an old marine telegrapher on the Great Lakes ore carriers
and car ferries. The "W" was added later to US calls (and the "K's"
came in the 50's ...I was first K9CAH in 1956 and callsigns were done
in alphabetic order at that time. "N" and "A" suffixes came later.

Of course, the scene with the ham operating at the beginning had to
have been a simulation as there was no ham radio during WW II, the
hams were forced off the air. The same thing happened in WW I.

I doubt anyone with an original two letter suffix is alive anymore.
The few I knew then were very old men in the 50's/60's. Those with
two letter suffixes who have them now started to get them in the
mid-late 1970s. At first you could get one if you held an Amateur
Extra and had been licensed for 20 years. The first group to get the
two letter option at that time were those who held the Extra before
incentive licensing came to be in the late 60's (they were very few in
number) Then it got phased in by according to when you got your Extra
and had the 20 years in. I was in that 2nd batch. Later the whole
thing became a part of a "vanity" callsign program. I got my two
letter suffix in 1977 right after I crossed the 20 year mark (I was
licensed at age 13.) To the extent they were available you could
request a callsign. I got my own initials though that call was
actually my third choice.

My first radio was a Hallicrafters S-38D which my folks bought for me
(rather cluelessly) while I was awaiting my license (It took about 3-4
months for a license to come through after one took an exam back
then,) The S-38 family was really just a consumer shortwave listening
radio and I'd be hard pressed to think of a radio less suitable for
two way communcations. Nevertheless, I did muddle through for one year
with that radio for a year and probably developed great skill in
selective listening to sort out signals on the novice bands which were
very crowded then. I worked quite a bit of stateside stations,
probably 20 states with that receiver and a heath AT-1 trasmitter,
rated at 25 watts INPUT, but actually putting out only about 7 watts.
We were QRP before there was QRP. By the next Christmas I had my
General Class which was actually quite a feat for a 13 year old as the
test required hand manipulation of algebraic formulae and I was a year
shy of having any Algebra class. My high school shop teacher (W9ZKB
-SK) tutored me through all this and I passed the first attempt. For a
short while I was the youngest ham in Wisconsin. I got a Hammarlund
HQ-100, one of the very first of those and had to wait about two
months beyond Christmas for it to come in. I had by then a Viking
Adventurer which was 50 watts in and about 25 out. It was all CW, I
couldn't afford a phone rig at home. I operated a lot from my Junior
High School where W9ZKB set up a spare rig of his in his drafting
classroom. He let me operate there during his class when I had a study
hall but I had to operate CW since I couldn't disturb his class. With
that lack of phone access, I became a pretty dedicated CW op. I still
am.

Jon Teske W3JT

"Jon Teske" wrote in message
...

I'm going a vague memory here, but one of the fellows did look like
Bill Halligan who 10 years later was often pictured in Hallicrafter's
ads. I remember he had a two letter suffix in his call and for some
reason I thought it was W9AN.

See www.geocities.com/w8jyz/W9AC.pdf

On Wed, 8 Apr 2009 09:39:03 +0100, "Roger Basford" Roger at new-gate
dot co dot uk wrote:


"Jon Teske" wrote in message
.. .

I'm going a vague memory here, but one of the fellows did look like
Bill Halligan who 10 years later was often pictured in Hallicrafter's
ads. I remember he had a two letter suffix in his call and for some
reason I thought it was W9AN.

See www.geocities.com/w8jyz/W9AC.pdf

Thanks Roger for that link. I wonder how he pulled off that two letter
call suffix having had a three letter one before. That must have been
quite rare or perhaps some sort of "reward" for his WW II engineering
service. I have no idea how that worked in those days. By the time I
got into radio (1956 as a teen) two letter suffixes were VERY rare in
the US until they became available as a sort of reward for having the
Extra Class and a certain amount of longevity. Later they became
available as a "vanity" program in conjuction with holding certain
classes of license. 1X2 calls don't seem to become available very
often now.

Allowing for changes in eyeglasses and a bit of aging, it does appear
that the fellow pictured in your link is the same guy I think was
Halligan in the movie. I knew one fellow who had worked with him
during the war and he said that Bill Halligan was a real gentleman and
a brilliant engineer.

Jon Teske, W3JT