Biography

I became a General Class license holder about 1963. I enlisted in the U,S, Navy Reserve
when I was 18 years old. They made be an E3 (Three Stripes)upon enlistment because I had an Amateur Radio License. This meant they did not have to train me how to send and receive Morse Code. This was great except it did not make me friendly with my Basic Training drill instructor, who could not comprehend a no nothing recruit Seaman being in Basic training wearing anything but one stripe on his sleeve. My Yankee accent did not help things; he constantly referred to me as "Kennedy". He assumed that I must Have been "High Born", and his job was to bring me down to earth. And that he did..

My short Navy career brought me to S.E. Asia, where a very hot "conflict" was underway. I was a Radioman on the(U.S.S. Mazama,(AE-9.

This job made me very popular with ships Officers and enlisted men. I was in great demand running "Phone Patches" with the help of many other Hams all over the U.S.A. I was operating as "K1VLU/(Maritime Mobile) somewhere in the South China Sea". Needless to say, I experienced zero difficulty making lots of contacts. This was a welcomed change from those miserable days during Basic training at Great Lakes Ill.

Equipment

Radio: Kenwood TS-430S transceiver, and Kenwood AT 250 antenna tuner, driving a Cushcraft (A4S)4 element beam @ about fifty feet.