Checking In ..   
      
    IM> On 05/25/16, Andy Ball said the following...   
    IM>     
    AB>   DWW> Greetings from N4DLT.   
    AB>    
    AB> Hello from KB9YLW in Illinois. :-)   
      
    IM> Ian VE7BST from Kelowna BC checking in.   
      
    IM> Ian.   
      
    IM> --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A15 (Linux)   
    IM>  * Origin: The Parity Error BBS (1:153/250)   
      
   Maybe the oldest ham still here in FidoNet!  When the US Extra Class was first   
   created I was the youngest ham radio operator to ever get one in 1952.    
   Originally as Novice WN5WQN and then as General W5WQN here in College Station,   
   Texas,  This message is actually coming from Historic House 66 in College   
   Station, Texas, which my Dad bought in 1947, though it was just a general   
   built house here when there were only about 2,500 citizens in College Station,   
   Texas and about 6,000 Texas Aggies here at what started as the Agricultural   
   and Mechanical College of Texas that was formed in 1876.  Dad came here in   
   1936 after he got his PhD in math from Iowa State in 1936 and retired as head   
   of the Math Department in 1974. I was born here in 1939.  Dad wrote the first   
   three programs for the original 64K IBM Mainframe, the size of a diesel truck   
   trailer that was put into the second floor of the Electrical Engineering   
   Department in the Bolton Hall during WWII.  I got hooked into radio curiosity   
   with one of the old whisker crystal sets to listen to the original WTAW-AM   
   radio station for Texas A&M, one of only six such "W" letter starting radio   
   call signs West of the Mississippi River here!    
    With the old coil I wound on a cereal box here in this same house now, I   
   could actually hear WOAI radio from San Antonio, Texas, in the wee hours of   
   the morning!   
      
   As a kid having to walk a mile every day to even the first grade in the still   
   here A&M Consolidated School system at six years old, I noticed one day there   
   was another antenna at the house where the guy who swept the floor and so on   
   of the Episcopal Church on Jersey Street lived!  I met this ham operator,   
   where A&M EE graduate Dr. George Huebner, W5GDK was! I managed to meet him and   
   he was my mentor that got me to be interested in ham radio and with my family   
   being intense music oriented folks, I was attracted to CW as well.   
      
   So became WN5WQN totally oriented to CW here.  Shoved into computer work by   
   Dad, I wound up originally a part of the creation of FidoNet, working with   
   Machine Language code, then into Assembly Language.  Eventually I wound up   
   with 300 and 1000 baud modems competely creating total control of all my even   
   40 meter KW CW system, the whole multi-vertical and even multi-square wave   
   antennas, the entire logging operations, the entire geophysical world-wide   
   location of every signal involved, the entire telpephone operations and   
   intercepted complete phone company Stowager Switch operation for the original   
   telephone service for everything.   
      
      IN TOTAL ABSOLUTE REAL TIME.   
      
   Before there was ever even an Internet.   
      
   And from which Bill Gates even got the DOS operating system which came from   
   Heath-DOS!  From Heath is where he got folks to orignally do all his   
   whatever.  Yes, I still have an original copy of the book Inside OS2 that   
   focuses on Gordon Letwin with the preface from Bill that has in it the phrase   
   'Do Not Poke, Feed or Tease The Animal'.   
      
   The original Emergency Operations Center systems that could survive the   
   horrible possibility of an original Atomic Bomb hit from Russia to the A&M   
   College here through underground buried telephone lines to our at that point   
   rural property with my at then huge W5WQN complete 40 CW system from which   
   came the only ever 40 meter CW application for an original 300, yes, three   
   hundred orignal countries ARRL DX Century Club award ever issued that was   
   earned by myself came from all this.  Yes, TOTAL REAL-TIME computer programing   
   that even became the first WTAW radio control operations with full equipment   
   control, totally accounting, and synchronized logging, as well as the complete   
   engineering for the first ever pager and mobile stuff for this entire area in   
   the world.  From my work with even 64K equipment I was driving around with my   
   pickup truck to figure out the exact place for the multiple pager system   
   antenna sites with this stuff.  I have the original thank you letter from the   
   ARRL for figuring out the EOC system operations which were proven to have   
   worked with the Field Day contest through the entire world!   
      
   Which by accident, also came from my computer, the first virus ever in the   
   world, as best I know, as an EOC system FidoNet accident from the program work   
   being done from the now deceased Paul Sittler from Texas A&M College! The   
   original hidden private telephone number calls, world-wide, to do the EOC work   
   by merging needed digital save our world messaging through 40 meter short wave   
   code each had an individual message complete to that site!  Paul forgot to   
   erase the message from the FidoNet server, even at that time some of which   
   used the old 8-inch floppies, or more new ones,the 5-inch floppies.  In the   
   first week, all the FidoNet servers in the whole world-area involved in this   
   development got blocked and went down the drain!   
      
   I still have most all of the stuff in collection for this, eventually that   
   became part of the Heathkit H89 64K computer, followed by the Heathkit H100   
   systems.  Which, I assure you is HUGELY grown up today, but stiil even   
   connected to the original crystal set I built in this Historic House number 66   
   here in College Station, Texas, my Dad bought in 1947.  And has a *LOT* more   
   historic stuff that traces back even to our family history in 1636 and before   
   that we'll be quiet about here,  Though I guarantee you that all of stuff in   
   life or even death now is hugely related to what is still the Ham Radio Echo   
   in FidoNet of today.   
      
   Still Welcome All new folks here.  You really count to carry all of the world   
   still upward if you look up the right way here!   
      
   Mike Luther as N117C and W5WQN at 1:117/100   
      
   ---   
    * Origin: BV HUB CLL(979)696-3600 (1:117/100)