My first exposure to Amateur Radio came when I was about 13 years old and found an ARRL Handbook in a local book store in New London, CT. It was a war time Handbook so there was no Amateur operation except for war emergency traffic. The frequency allocations listed were the prewar bands. As I recall, all frequencies above 400mHz were unallocated and available to Amateurs. Everything about radio fascinated me and I read the Handbook from cover to cover. I was hooked! I was completely on my own. I didn't know of any hams in Salem, CT where I lived.
I started at Northeastern University in Boston in 1948. The FCC office was in the Customs House in downtown Boston. This was an easy subway trip from Northeastern The examiner was a very kind gentleman, but you had to copy 13 wpm for a license. This turned out to be a major impediment for me. The examiner once asked me if I came down just for practice, but I assured him that was not the case.
When the Novice and Technician licenses were created, I rushed to the Customs House in Boston to take the exams. I was first licensed in 1951 as WN1UIZ/W1UIZ in Salem, CT. I struggled through the 5 wpm code and aced both theory exams. I upgraded to General in 1953.
My first 2m operating experience was from the Northeastern University radio club station, W1KBN . The rig was a converted SCR522 with a converted ARC-5 transmitter used as an 8 mHz VFO. VFO rigs were rare on 2m in those days. Boston was still using vertical polarization on 2m so DX was limited.
Salem, CT is well positioned for coastal VHF openings down the East coast. When conditions were right, I could predict when the Norfolk, VA stations would start coming in. I could probably have worked farther down the coast if there had been any activity in North Carolina. There was a station in Rocky Mount, NC, but he never seemed to be on the air.
With Wayne Taft, W1WID, we conducted many contest operations from Mt. Equinox, VT and Mt. Monadnock, NH. These operations started as 144 mHz only and were expanded to 5 bands with the help of Wayne who built a lot of portable equipment. We continued our June VHF contest expeditions to Mt. Equinox until 1961.
I graduated from Northeastern in 1955 and went to work for RCA in Lancaster, PA in the Color Picture Tube division. I received the call W3FEY for the Lancaster location and continued to maintain a station in Salem, CT until 1966. My first station in Lancaster was on 144 mHz using a pair of cut down channel 4 TV yagis. WGAL-TV, Lancaster, was originally on channel 4 and they gave viewers who had ghosting problems free channel 4 yagis. All the local 2m operators had ghosting problems. Most TV stations now deliver their signals to the local cable company via fiber optics to guarantee a good picture.
When I moved to Lancaster I started operating on 2 meters from an apartment at 1685 Lincoln Highway East. My landlord allowed me to attach an antenna tower to a garage on the property. It wasn't a very good location, but I made the best of it.
In 1958, I moved to 858 Eden Road, Lancaster where I could have more than one antenna. I put all bands from 50 - 1296 mHz on the air from that location. The 1296 mHz rig was an amplitude modulated tripler using a 2C39 built by Wayne, W1WID. This rig made a lot of contacts from Mt. Equinox, but only one successful contact from Lancaster with W3ARW in Scranton. I could hear W3CGV in Wilmington, DE, but he couldn't hear me. There just wasn't much activity on 1296 in those days.
In 1963, I moved to my present location where I operated 2m only for many years. General Electric bought RCA in 1988 and job survival became a big issue. Almost all radio operation ceased until 2000 when I started a slow rebuilding process.