Hi Ed!   
      
    EV> I learned about Ham Radio in the Autumn of 1956 and hadn't heard   
    EV> about SSB until a few years later.   
      
   I started down the radio trail at around 10 years of age in the 4th grade here   
   in College Station, Texas.  I could read at 3 years of age and in the second   
   grade I convinced my Dad to buy me a crystal set with the little arm and wire   
   on it plus get me a little headphone set.  I wound my first coil on a Quaker   
   Oatmeal box and stunned my Dad when I let him hear WTAW-AM here at Teas A&M on   
   1150Khz on it!  WTAW for (Watch The Aggies Win) in 1929 - one of only six "W"   
   call signs West of the Mississippi River.   
      
   But he was REALLY stunned when I let him hear WOAI in San Antonio from that   
   same crystal set 150 miles away, grin.  My Uncle Bill Schuster, at that time   
   the major competitor to Allied Electronics, gave me a 78 RPM record set that   
   taught people CW and I learned it from them.  From which came my original call   
   WN5WQN in 1952.  The FCC then created the Extra Class license.  My Dad took me   
   on a summer vacation to Erie, Pennsylvania to the Buffalo, New York,FCC   
   Office, where I took the Extra Class in 1953.  Passed it.  At that time the   
   youngest person ever in the USA to be awarded the Extra Class and I still hold   
   the call sign W5WQN.  I really have no interest even to this time in 2012 in   
   anything but CW.  Of interest I am typing this in the exactly same room in the   
   family house in College Station where that crystal set was built. I still have   
   the lead crystal with the cat whisker pointer on it in my archives.   
      
   I probably passed one of my most important milestones in my life when from   
   this historic house here in College Station, I was able to maintain a full   
   copy contact with a CW friend of mine on 40 Meter CW at the Sunrise line to   
   Perth, Australia with even down to ONE WATT of power to him in the 1950's!    
   Still in the dark, I took my four cell flashlight out into the back yard   
   darkness that new moon night.  I pointed it up in the sky toward Australia.    
   That flashlight had about one watt of a light bulb in it. As I looked upward   
   into the sky to how far the light beam went, my whole life changed.  It hit   
   me.  If one watt could bounce up and down off the sky and sea and get to Perth   
   where even thousands of people could hear me and that flashlight only went up   
   that far...  I realized just how important that something far bigger than   
   humanity had to be there and what my mission had to be to help carry everyone   
   upward that I encountered.  While not telling them lies, stealing from them,   
   nor cheating them with what I learned.   
      
   The family also has rural property here which formally has the licensed site   
   for W5WQN now out near the Navasota River some 20 miles away.  From that site   
   I wound up being the only ham in the world ever to apply for an original ARRL   
   DXCC award with THREE HUNDRED QSL confirmed countries - all on 40 Meter CW   
   only.  The total now is just at 320 and my hope is that I can make it to Honor   
   Role only on 40CW before I pass away.  I've worked enough to make that, but no   
   QSL from a few of them.  And the longest I have ever waited for a QSL or   
   answer to my College Station mail site is thirty-five (35) years.  I sent my   
   needed QSL to a contact in Liberia just before Kiddafi took over.  Never heard   
   from my friend.  35 years later, I got a QSL from him!  When he got out of   
   prison he got to check his log book and his QSL was one of those cards that   
   was in that original DXCC application.   
      
   Chasing DX on the Gray Line after these countries in the 1974 era, I got so   
   tired of fighting that tap, tap, tap every morning or evening that I learned   
   was the Russion OTH megawatt radar!  I couldn't see why it legally ought to be   
   in the ham bands.  The hams all over the world hated it.  By then I was a   
   professional radar engineer as well as other things, having actually built the   
   first color weather radar at Texas A&M back in the 1950's that one of my   
   mentors, Dr. George Huebner, W5GDK had designed here.  I thought I might be   
   able to confuse things.  So with a scope and precise computer system, assembly   
   language and the original HeathKit H89 64K computer kit I had built, I synced   
   the inbound Woodpecker to my 40CW KW homebuilt system and my cubical quad   
   array.  I sent TEST, then pinged the echo back over the poles to the   
   Woodpecker.  Gently sliding my frequency down toward the Pecker site.    
   Incoming!  Poof!  In less than two minutes no more Woody.  When it quit I sent   
   "DE W5WQN" on a little different frequency to make things legal.  After about   
   a month of this, Woody vanished from the ham bands and never came back. The   
   hams around the world were estatic!  But this never surfaced outside of my   
   work for about ten years more.  When I took the logs, plus the audio   
   recordings for the events to the monthly FidoNet meetings at Mann's BBQ in   
   Bryan and played the tape for them to hear.  To the horror of one of the Fido   
   users at that time who had come to Texas A&M for his degree.  He turned out to   
   be the US military guy that had attempted to figure out a way to defeat Woody   
   and was thinking of the same thing back a decade or so!  But when Woody   
   vanished from the ham bands, they knew they'd been figured out but they never   
   knew how.  Until then!   
      
   Poof!  Here came the USA RF4 jet reconnisance training planes from the Austin,   
   Texas Bergstrom Air Force Base.  Flying day and night at 600 MPH over my   
   station site at about 500 feet off the ground using it for training and   
   surveilance for years after that!  The neighbors never knew why and they HATED   
   these runs,  And it gets bigger and bigger but no point in going into all the   
   mess that resulted from this which still goes on one way or another even today.   
      
   I'm now 73 years old.  Still on the air with even far more modern stuff and   
   way up there in computer programming and real-time professional template work   
   that is unique to my understanding of life and things.  All based on that   
   incredible night back in the 1950's.  When I shined that one watt flashlight   
   up in the sky and realized what life was really all about.  And what I believe   
   our real purpose here on earth is.   
      
   To carry everyone we meet upward and maximize their choices for what to do in   
   life.  But since I am a human being too, and that has to be my right as well   
   -I try to do it for them at the same time as I do it for myself.   
      
   All because of ham radio.   
      
     -... -.-   
      
   Mike Luther - W5WQN and N117C from 1:117/100   
      
      
   ---   
    * Origin: BV HUB CLL(979)696-3600 (1:117/100)