As a high school kid in the early 60s I snuck off to Newark Electronics in downtown Chicago a few times and discovered a KWM-2. Transceivers were a new concept then and I was in love. But it cost what I earned on my paper route in 8 or 9 years. In college we had an S-Line station (32S-1 and 72S-1 and 30L-1) and I always thought “some day”. That day finally came when my ham license was about 50 — the spring of 2011. I have a KWM-2A and 30L-1 station I use on SSB with a vintage appropriate bug for occasional CW. The past lives every day here. Traffic handling and rag chews are as fun as they ever were.

As a foot note my first KWM-2A was acquired in 2003 while I was still K9FID. It was on K4ZRDs screen saver station slide show with my yellow lab, Mike (AKA K9MIC) operating it. A couple years later he said the most common comment he received was “the dog”. The dog lives on; but the station had issues so it left. I couldn’t live without one so I decided to find a real good one, bite the bullet, and do it right the second time. And I did.

73
John  W4FID