Posted	Category
	Alexancer Lewyt - inventor and entrepreneur Alexander M. Lewyt died in 1988 at the age of 79, a holder of patents on scores of inventions. His penchant for invention, he once said, was so strong that he had chronic insomnia from lying awake at night envisioning new products. When he learned of undertakers’ difficulty in fastening neckties on corpses, the teen-age Lewyt devised a new kind of bow tie that clipped on. He sold 50,000 of t...  READ MORE	ranickels 01/08/2021	Historic
	Ham radio operators honor legacy of Mars Hill company Here's a link to a nice story in the Madison NC newspaper about area hams paying tribute to the former Hammarlund company that manufactured radios in Mars Hill NC for decades.   There are some neat historiic photos as wellThe paper has a paywall but it looks like you get 5 free articles:HAMMARLUND ARTICLE...  READ MORE	ranickels 12/12/2020	Historic
	Ham radio operators honor legacy of Mars Hill company Here's a nice story about how the hams around Mars Hill NC honored the legacy of the Hammarlund company that manufactured radios there for many years.  It's behind a paywall but it looks like you get 5 free articles:LINK to Hammarlund story...  READ MORE	ranickels 12/12/2020	Historic
	Ed Marriner, W6BLZ/W6XM (SK)  This tribute to Ed Marriner will be updated over time.   Having known his writings since my earlies ham days in the 1960s, I knew about the "SSB Transceiver from a BC453" conversion article/booklet, but until I had the good fortune to acquire two homebrew SSB transceivers made by his good friend Ernie Mason W6IQY did I know that my vintage SSB friend Lynn Fisk K5LYN was a...  READ MORE	ranickels 10/25/2020	Historic
	A visit to the D J Everett III Radio Room Many successful career people are grateful for mentoring they received on the way to the top. But few have honored a memory as passionately as has been done by Beth Mann.   She's the owner of Ham Broadcasting which owns five stations in western Kentucky but the story is about her mentor, the late DJ Everett III who started WKDZ in Cadiz Kentucky in 1966.   Everett worked as...  READ MORE	ranickels 08/14/2020	Historic
	Boatanchor Garge Door Opener  The Multi Elmac Company of Hazel Park and later, Oak Park MI is best know amongst hams for it's great mobile transmitters and receivers which were probably the most popular rigs of their type and are still often used on AM today.   The Multi Elmac Net pays tribute to these little rigs by and typically a half-dozen or more are heard on the net weekly.But the company's origin...  READ MORE	ranickels 04/22/2020	Historic
	Wireless on a Train WHEN Frederick Wally stepped out of a little cubby-hole in one corner of the forward day coach on the Lackawanna Limited, west-bound, as it neared North Scranton, Pennsylvania, Tuesday, November 25, 1913, and pinned a sheet of paper on the wall, the passengers in the front seats, who had been casually wondering what caused the strange, crackling sounds that had been coming from the cubby-hole, pri...  READ MORE	ranickels 04/14/2020	Historic
	An Unbreakable Code The Code Talkers used native languages to send military messages before World War II. Choctaw, for example, was successfully used during World War I. But the Marine Corps needed an “unbreakable” code for its island-hopping campaign in the Pacific. Navajo, which was unwritten and known by few outside the tribe, seemed to fit the Corps’ requirements. Twenty-nine Navajos were recrui...  READ MORE	ranickels 03/06/2020	Historic
	65 Years as a YL Ham  This all started when I discovered a fantastic collection of vintage photo QSL cards on a Google+ site – I’d encourage every ham to spend some time looking through this amazing bit of history:   https://plus.google.com/115747543308902188110The photos capture a wide range of ham gear and stations from the spark era through the 70’s, and nearly every picture trigger...  READ MORE	ranickels 12/11/2019	Historic
	I find the show-biz association of the founder of Allied Radio, Simon Wexler, to be rather fascinating.  What started out as a supplier of crystal set parts led to a family that became a major force in the entertainment industry and in Chicago business...including many recognizable names:"Allied Radio (now known as Allied Electronics) is a company with a long history. On August 6, 1...  READ MORE	ranickels 04/14/2019	Historic