This episode of HamTalk Live is brought to you
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for more information about ICOM radios. Standing
in the snow with a brand new radio Catching the
ISS, satellites are the best A date on the roof,
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contacts with everyone I meet Oh, radio, radio,
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the USA Hey, radio, radio, QTS and Fox 1A Hey,
good evening everyone. It's time for ham talk
live episode number 240 is new Helical antenna
recorded live on Thursday, December 17th 2020
I'm your host Neil rap wb9 vpg. Thanks for tuning
in to this episode of ham talk live tonight We're
joined once again by John fortune w that 6nbc
And we'll take your calls live in just a few
minutes. Last week here on the show, Steve Molo,
Ki4KWR from Giga Parts was here to talk about
some holiday gift ideas for hams. If you missed
that, you can listen anytime at HamTalkLive .com
or on your favorite podcast app or on YouTube.
And you can catch the rebroadcast on WTWW that's
5 0 8 5 a .m. Saturday afternoons at about 3
30 p .m. Eastern time lots of stuff going on
on the air this month We have the 12 days of
Christmas special event going on now Through
Christmas and then the Christmas birthday event
From Lou and Sally that Lou has the I think it's
Lou that has the the December 25th birthday So
they'll be celebrating that and then the Santa
Dats are going on CQ Santa calm is one of those
you can check out and Then Yoda month is at the
halfway point and they're up to like 60 maybe
70 ,000 Q so is right now, so They're well on
track to beat the record from from last year
so lots of stuff going on and we're gonna talk
tonight about an antenna that that you might
even be able to to disguise it as a as a winter
decoration will talk about that here in a little
bit so get your questions ready to go for John
If you're listening to us live on Thursday night,
give us a call after the interview is over by
calling 859 -982 -7373. I'll give you that number
again several times before it's time to call
in, so we'll let you know that. Later on in the
show, you can also tweet us. It's at HamTalk
Live on Twitter. You can fire that whenever you
want and I'll check that as we... have time this
evening, but again, the number for later on in
the show is 859 -982 -7373. Just have that ready
to go and we'll let you know when it's time.
We'll talk a little bit with John about the antenna
and give you a little background first before
we open it up for questions. So we'll do that
a little later on in the show. So I'll be back
with John. right after this word from Tower Electronics
right here on HamTalk Live. I'm not so sure why
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Welcome back to Ham Talk Live Tower Electronics.
is back out on the ham fest trail as covid permits
their schedule right now looks like uh tailgate
in orlando on uh jalot or january 16th rather
uh jack lawyer's tailgate uh arcadia florida
ham fest january 23rd dalton georgia february
27th but you can catch them anytime anywhere
pl -259 So thanks to Tower Electronics for sponsoring
the show once again tonight and we welcome you
back. John Portun is our guest tonight. He joins
us on the Orlando Amateur Radio Club and hamcation
Zoom line tonight. And John's call is W6NBC.
and he's been a ham since 1965. He's active from
160 meters to 2 .4 gigahertz and helps people
get licensed and new licensees. He manages a
remote base on HF and VHF on Vandenberg Air Force
Base and does a lot of local two meter and 40
meter mobile from his RV. And he's married to
KF -60EB and has three married children, 12 grandchildren.
He retired in 2002. Spent most of his time working
for, yeah, you guessed it, KNBC TV in Los Angeles
and also Ampex Corporation and Sony Electronics.
He frequently writes for QST and other ham radio
publications, including how to deal with HOAs
and antennas. And that's what we're going to
talk about tonight is one of his latest antenna
creation. So John, welcome back to the show.
Thanks for coming back. Oh, my pleasure, Neil.
Very happy to be here. Well, this new antenna,
I have to give a little background here because
I first asked John, hey, do you have because
you're always coming up with all these different
ideas for antennas. And I said, do you have any
any Christmas? antennas do you have anything
you're like well no but I but I've got this new
helical copper tape antenna and immediately when
I go to the website and take a look at a picture
of this it's wrapped around this PVC pole and
it looks it looks just like the North Pole so
I think you know or a peppermint stick so I'm
thinking this is a Christmas themed antenna I
don't know if that was what you thought, but
I think a little red on that copper tape and
nobody would ever know. And maybe an elf hat.
Yeah, put a little elf hat on top of it. Well,
you're always coming up with these great ideas
on how to kind of make these antennas blend in
so tell us a little bit of the the backstory
on how this and by the way this is the the most
recent uh qst article orders i like to call it
sometimes q street um give us some of the background
on on how this this idea came about and and how
this all worked Yeah, well, this is a bit of
a ham war story and since we can't hear show
you how to build one of these on on on radio
Even though I like radio as a medium the a bit
of the anecdote of the background of it at my
pre -covid weekly ham breakfast my good buddy
KF 6 not KF but K W6 OEK confusing my wife's
call sign in there. W -6 -O -E -K, Jim Bailey,
who helps me a lot with articles, and I were
just kicking the bull around one morning and
the question came up, what kind of articles does
QST like the best? And I thought about this and
now with this latest article, that's just 27
articles in QST, so I do have some experience.
I said it's obvious. They like simple, build
it articles. So we kind of brainstormed there
over breakfast, one of the last breakfasts we
had. And on the way home, I let the thinking
cap work. And when I got home, in two hours,
I had the antenna built. In two more hours, I
had the article written and put in the mail off
to QST. And as little as a week later, They sent
me a letter back saying they accepted it. It's
an absolute record. Most of my articles of the
27 of them in QSD have taken up to a year between
the time I wrote the article and they got in
the magazine, not this one. Well, this one is
built out of, and if you haven't seen it and
haven't looked at it, you should, because it's
unusual. It appeared in the... October issue,
which is that black one with the ham boot cab
on the front. Hams love PVC pipe and copper pipe.
So I figured you gotta make the simplest antenna
in the world out of PVC pipe and copper pipe.
A good buddy at breakfast and I, we have this
standing joke. The ham who dies with the most
PVC pipe wins. It's made out of copper tape.
actually snail tape, the kind of tape you get
at a garden store and put around your planters
to keep the snails from crawling up and eating
your begonias. Or you can buy it anywhere. On
the internet, it's readily available for RF shielding
and other things. One inch wide copper tape,
an inch and a quarter PVC. It's only 18 inches
tall, yet it's almost as good as a J -Pole. That's
the background to it. All right. Well, let's
talk a little bit about the theory behind this
because you've got this thing just twisted around
and It really does look like a peppermint stick
and and I've sent out a picture of it on our
social media site. So if you don't have the QST
article handy, you can take a look at that or
John's website at w6nbc .com. But you can see
that it looks like just a ribbon wrapped around
a pole. That's it. So let's talk a little bit
about how in the world you get this to tune and
get this working. The antenna is basically a
coil loader, a loading coil shortened vertical,
a halfway vertical. It's pretty straightforward.
Most TAMs know what that is. But instead of being
discreetly loaded with a closely wound wire loading
coil, it's continuously wound. So the antenna
and the loading coil are all one piece. The copper
tape, being an inch wide, is good conductivity.
And if we have some time to talk about it, we
can talk about efficiency. That gives the antenna
high efficiency and the spacing helps with skin
effect loss. But what's interesting about this
antenna, I think, and this is a ham tip. that
a lot of hams don't know this, but I've found
this out with easy neck modeling. Easy neck,
by the way, is my favorite piece of ham software.
If you don't know how to run easy neck, learn
how if you're an antenna person. Anyway, one
of the basic principles that this antenna embodies
is how easy it is to match a small antenna. Bigger
antennas are more difficult. Now, we all know
that a dipole, a wired dipole out in free space,
has a center feed point impedance of 72 ohms.
And that's fine. That's not a perfect match though
to 50 ohm coax. But if you make that antenna
shorter by putting loading coil in it or making
it continuously loaded, like this little antenna
is, the center impedance is now much lower. In
the case of this antenna, something around 25
ohms. But what impedance is there at the end
of this antenna? Well, most hands know that the
ends of a dipole, the impedance is high, the
voltage is high, the current is low. The impedance
out at the end of an antenna of a dipole can
be several thousand ohms. This means that for
any small antenna, any size reduced antenna,
there are two 50 ohm points, partly off center.
And that's exactly what's used in this particular
antenna. The top wrap, the top of the antenna
is three and a half turns, and the bottom of
the antenna is four and a half turns. It's an
off -center fed dipole. Either one of... to the
side of the middle of this antenna, a short distance
by about one turn, you'll find 50 ohms naturally.
You can hook the coax to it and you don't need
any other magic. That's what's handy about small
antennas. And I use this principle all the time.
Anyway, so that's one of the basic theory points
in this antenna. Well, you mentioned that You
could modify this for HF and that's gonna make
it a bigger antenna. So Let's talk about some
suggestions for our listeners if you if you want
to try to Turn this into an HF antenna and make
some of those modifications and and I know you
want to kind of keep track of some of that So
so talk a little bit about making this a bigger
antenna Of course, and this is really what I'm
really interested in. It's a very good little
two meter antenna, but I'm most interested in
seeing what can be done with it on lower frequencies.
I know for sure it will be fairly easy to take
it down to six meters, because all you have to
do is increase the dimensions of an antenna,
lengthen it, and you know, you can take it down
in frequency. I would recommend if anybody wants
to try this, and I have one fellow who's working
on a 40 meter version of it. Here's my recommendation
if you want to make this antenna for a lower
frequency. Stay with the same size tape and the
same size spacing. By the way, the spacing is
to reduce skin effect loss between adjacent turns.
Coil turns don't like to be next to each other.
They cause skin effect loss and make the conductivity
higher or greater inefficiency. But if you're
going to make it for a lower frequency, use the
same one inch tape. It's about equivalent to
half inch copper tubing. So it's nice. It's very
conductive. It's very conductive material. And
so the efficiency can stay high. Just make the
pole bigger in diameter. A six meter one, you
might make it on three inch PVC pipe instead
of inch and a quarter. And of course, make it
longer. Where do you start? Very simply. Put
on the pipe 80 % of the half wavelength. So if
the wavelength, let's say, is six meters, half
of the half wavelength is three meters, that's
about 10 feet. Put about eight feet of tape on
the pipe. That'll get you in the ballpark. It'll
be too long still. But that's a good starting
point. And then start whacking tape off. It's
easy to do. Just cut it off the top until you
get a good SWR. Then cut it off both ends until
you get it tuned up. It's a very easy antenna
to tune. So that's some of the basics of putting
it on another band. I think it'll go easily to
10 meters and 12 meters. I'm going to try a 20
meter version here one of these days. Okay, now
I'm gonna throw you the curveball John sure Let's
say I want to add red to this What I've been
running through some ideas on on what I would
use to do that but what What are your ideas?
If I want to make that copper look look red and
make it disguised as the North Pole. I don't
know. I think I might over tape it with one inch
plastic electrical tape. That might do it. Nothing
comes off the head. I can't think of spray painting
it. That sounds rather difficult. You can paint
this antenna if you want to. I don't have any
ideas, so I'm open. If you've got some ideas,
I welcome them. Well, you're close. I was thinking
maybe ribbon. Well, yeah, that might work. At
least for the holiday season. Yeah, get some
nice one -inch ribbon from the local sewing store
and just tape it on. Since this is wound on helically
in a nice uniform helix, it would be easy to
run the ribbon on in the same way. A little bit
of gorilla tape should hold it on fine. And then
the other the other thing I thought of was maybe
like some red cellophane kind of like a one -inch
You know put it down in strips Then you then
you can disguise it which which you know Why
why go with this antenna instead of a j -pole?
Is it just to make it less obvious? Yeah, I think
there are several distinct advantages to it.
First of all, the classic homebrew copper pipe
J -Pole, the favorite antenna of homebrew hams
of all times, the famous copper half -inch pipe
J -Pole. That antenna is five feet tall, and
this antenna is 18 inches tall, and the gain
is only half a dB less than that J -Pole. so
So it certainly is far stealthier Your neighbors
might even think you opened up a barbershop It's
extremely lightweight too doesn't weigh more
than a couple of pounds so if you if you're out
in a bike -a -thon or you know a mobile event
where you go out to help out for net control.
This makes a great antenna for net control because
you can also build it in one piece so that the
mast and the antenna are a single integrated
piece. You have to build it 18 inches long. Build
it six feet long if you want. Just put it up
at the top of a single piece. No clamps, no nothing.
Very lightweight. You can carry it along. Maybe
use it as a walking stick while you're walking
around at the bike -a -thon. So that's one of
the distinct events. And it's cheap as heck.
If you amortize the cost of this antenna, even
if you have to buy a bit more stuff, which you
usually do to build anything, but the amortized
cost of this antenna is under $10, even including
the pigtail and the coax and everything else
you use for it. It uses a little eight foot long
RG -59 or Mini -8 coax pigtail. which can hook
direct to an HT, or I would recommend using heavier
coax beyond it back into the shack just to minimize
loss. And there's the ballon. The ballon is easy
to make. You just wind some turns of the RG58
and shove it up in the end of the pipe and put
a cap on the end to hold it in. And it's a terribly
easy antenna to make, but quite efficient and
good gain. Same gain as a J pole basically only
half a DB less Well, there you go. That's a more
ingenuity from John fortune w6 NBC so we're going
to take a break and When we come back, we're
going to talk with John. We'll talk maybe a little
more about the efficiency and and talk about
Disguising antennas and take your calls and your
questions at eight five nine 9 8 2 73 73 so I'll
be back with John right after this word from
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Oh, there we go. That is another joke from Rick.
Well... We're going to go back to the antennas.
If you have a question for John for two W six
NBC, give us a call at eight five nine. nine
eight two seventy three seventy three now is
the time to call eight five nine nine eight two
seventy three seventy three or tweeters and sat
and talk live on twitter uh... if you are on
uh... speaker you can type comment and we'll
see that and if you're listening to us on w t
w w or on the podcast edition you won't be able
to reach us uh... we're doing this live on thursday
night uh... so We've talked about, you know,
disguising some of these antennas. Let's talk
a little bit about the efficiency and the radiation
pattern off of this thing, John. Okay, the radiation
pattern is straightforward. It's a dipole, a
shortened dipole. So it has the same basic radiation
pattern as a vertical dipole. The classical donut
-shaped radiation, horizontally, and omnidirectional.
if you look down on top of it. So that's then
with a gain of 1 .6 dBi compared to 2 .1 and
the same radiation pattern of a J -pole, which
is basically a dipole. The bottom section of
a J -pole does not radiate. Efficiency -wise,
this antenna is good, and I set out in designing
this one to be sure it was. That's why I used
the wide copper tape. It has low ohmic resistance,
and that's important, very, very, very important
for small antennas. Any of you who have ever
played around with the so -called magnetic loop,
I don't like that term, I like calling them compact
transmitting loops, know that you need to make
them out of big copper conductors if you want
them to work well. Because... They suffer from
efficiency losses due to one phenomenon. Now
here's a little theory. If you draw the diagram,
the equivalent diagram of any antenna, it has
four things in it. A coil and a capacitor, distributed
inductance, distributed capacity. That's what
makes it resonant at a given size. But it also,
in series with the coil and the capacitor, are
two resistances, R sub C we call it, or conductor
resistance. That's just the plane ohmic resistance
of the copper or the aluminum. The other is an
entity called radiation resistance. Hams have
vaguely heard of the term, but not a lot of hams
really understand what radiation resistance is.
Just a brief word on that. Radiation resistance
is a real resistance. It's measured in ohms.
But it's a virtual resistance caused by the loading
of space around an antenna. Space is not unreal.
Empty space is not unreal. It's very definitely
real. It's one of the four basic constituents
of the universe. Matter, space, time, and energy.
Empty space, even if it's got no matter, no energy
in it, is still real. The reason is it loads
an antenna. That's what Hertz and Maxwell discovered
back in the 1850 times. It's the loading of space.
I like to imagine it as a bowl full of jelly.
The whole universe is a big bowl full of jelly,
rubbery jelly. And when the RF that comes out
of your radio shakes the electrons in your antenna,
it shakes that bowl full of jelly. It resists
the flow. of the shaking electrons that are making
radio waves. If it wasn't there and if it wasn't
real, an antenna would not radiate. This is a
metaphor, but I like the metaphor of a bowl full
of jelly. And hey, by hey, Neil, that ties up
with Christmas. There you go. His belly shook
like a bowl full of jelly. You read my mind.
Anyway. Consider those two resistances that exist
in all antennas, conductor resistance and radiation
resistance. Now, for big antennas, the conductor
resistance is reasonable, but the radiation resistance
is quite high. And when the RF from your transmitter
passes through those two resistances, the conductor
resistance makes wasted heat. But the radiation
resistance is where the RF energy goes and makes
radio waves. So we want the radiation resistance
to be high compared to the conductor resistance.
That's why we made this antenna out of wide copper
tape, or why you make magnetic loops out of wide
big fat copper tubing. because their radiation
resistance is low. Any small antenna has a low
radiation resistance. There's less jello around
it. So it isn't resisted as much by space. So
it has a low radiation resistance. If you want
an antenna to be efficient, you have to have
a high radiation resistance compared to the ohmic
resistance. It's a ratio between the two. And
in this antenna, it's good. The wide copper tape
compared to the approximate 30 ohm radiation
resistance has much less conductor resistance
than 30 ohms. So that's why we made it this way.
And that's how we get it to be an efficient antenna.
And an antenna is just not an antenna if it's
not somewhat efficient. You know, if it's not
going to work, don't bother. Well, Chris, AA4CB
has a question. We talked about making this bigger
and getting it into the HF bands, but Chris wants
to go the other direction. He wants to know,
could this be scaled to use on UHF, maybe on
440? Oh, why, of course. You can buy this copper
tape. in virtually any size you want. You can,
in fact, use aluminum tape if you want. Aluminum
is not that much less conductive than copper.
And I know the 99 cent store, for example, sells
aluminum tape. I use it for lots of things. But
the copper is a little better, so I just used
it. And I think a 440 antenna made maybe on a
piece of three quarter inch PVC pipe out of half
inch copper tape spaced half an inch apart to
keep the adjacent turn skin loss down would work
just fine. And you tune it up the same way. Whack
off the top for a good SWR, whack off both ends
to get the frequency tuned. Straightforward.
Tune it up with an antenna analyzer very quickly.
Okay, Chris, there you go. Maybe that's Project
for you to get this going over on 70 centimeters.
Well, if you have a question Give us a call at
eight five nine and nine eight two seventy three
seventy three or tweet us It's at ham talk live
or you can do like Chris did and leave a comment
here on speaker and we'll pick that up and We'll
get all your questions answered here. We've got
a little bit longer to go One thing that I wanted
to talk to you about. Oh, let me see. Oh He says,
I'm cheap. I'll slice the tape in half the width.
Okay. So, one thing that I want to talk about,
and we've talked about on this show before, is
just kind of remind people about dealing with
HOAs and, you know, trying to get permission
to put up an antenna that maybe isn't quite so
stealthy. Of course, you've got some options,
some great options for stealthy antennas, so
they may not know any better. But just remind
everybody some of the points that you made, because
I think you made some great points about ways
to deal with the HOAs in this kind of situation.
Oh, yeah. Well, my main key, I have two main
keys in dealing with HOAs. First of all, make
antennas that don't look like antennas. You know,
lots of loading coils and traps and, you know,
and capacity hats and stingers sticking out in
all sorts of directions. It's a dead giveaway.
But make it look like a flagpole or make it look
like a bird nest. The antenna I've got in my
backyard, which is an HF double inverted delta,
It doesn't look like an antenna. It looks like
a ship's mast. In fact, I always want to hang
flags on it. Make your antennas so they don't
look like antennas. And make them look like they
belong on your roof. You can disguise it as a
vent pipe. To me, these are important issues.
why I have another antenna that may come out
very soon in PQST. It's an inverted delta six
meter antenna. I've got flags hanging on it.
And long as you hang patriotic flags on your
antennas, people don't think they can't tell
you to take them down. Well, and you know, and
there's a good approach to that if you do go
to them and are trying to ask permission there's
a You know, there's an approach to take Well,
I don't know that I have any magic formulas about
the right approach Obviously not not clobbering
them over the head with with regulations that
the government has Yes, there are regulations
about it. I think if you actually want to enter
into conversations with your HOA people, it's
got to be about the fact that whatever you do,
you're sensitive the way things look, just as
they are, and that you'll be cooperative. But
that's just what comes off the top of my head.
That is what I was going for. Don't clobber them
over the head with all this stuff, because if
you go in and be cooperative and try to work
with them, I think your chances are a whole lot
better. So that's what we're going for. Yeah,
I've got five antennas right now on my mobile
home. And we're heavily antenna restricted. deeds
of covenant saying no antennas, no transmitting,
yet I've got five of them sitting out there.
Not one of them looks like an antenna. And if
it's out there, buried in a tree, or it's lost
in the backyard, or it's hidden in a vent pipe,
or it's got flags flying on it, I thought one
of the funny, the cutest thing, cutest decorations
to put on an antenna, we don't have them in this
area, but back on the East Coast, there are,
there's a particular swallow. forget what it's
called a blue something or other and they like
to nest in these little gourd shaped nests and
this guy has several of them hanging on his antenna
to disguise it and when the neighbors say what's
that he says oh that's a that's that's a resting
new uh a roosting place for the for the swallows
so blending in is always a way to to make that
work and then you've come up with all kinds of
creative ideas for doing that. So John, I think
we're about out of time here, so I'll let you
make any final comments and then we're going
to get going. We do have something a little special
tonight as we sign off, so we'll get to that
here in a minute, but any final comments here
before we go? No, just to tell you that you can
reach me at Jay Portun. That's my last name,
Jay. p -o -r -t -u -n -e -jportune at aol .com
or you can contact me through my website w6nbc
.com where most of these articles are posted.
I always put the QST articles up there later.
And just to give a shameless plug here, and now
for these important announcements. Many of you
may, many of you. That's my radio day sticking
out. Many of you may not know that I recently
published an Amazon Kindle book, Slot Antennas
for Ham Radio. If you're interested, and that's,
of course, been my real love for three years,
is Slot Antennas. I decided to write it down
as a book. It's inexpensive on Amazon .com. Just
go to Amazon .com, search for Kindle book. Slot
antennas for ham radio and I think I think you'll
find some designs in there that you might find
useful All right, very good. Well, we got the
shameless plug -in and thank you for that and
I'm sure that's Some excellent information. So
we'll have to check that out Well, thank you
so much for coming back. We appreciate it and
and we'll look forward to the the creative idea
you have next time All the best best 73 is what
you shouldn't say Well, that is a wrap for this
week's edition of HamTalk Live. Thanks to my
guest, John Portun, W6NBC, and everybody out
there in cyberspace for listening and calling
in, typing in rather, we had typing in tonight,
and invite you back in two weeks on Thursday,
January 7th at 9 p .m. Eastern Time. I'm gonna
take Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve off, so
it'll be two weeks before we're... back but Thursday
January 7th I'll be back with another episode
and you can find our upcoming guests over at
HamTalkLive .com and if you like the show please
leave us a review that'll help others find us
faster and so we're going to sign off here tonight
but first we're going to close this show with
a clip from episode number 44 where Brian Lynn,
KD0HI from the Christian Amateur Radio Fellowship
Net, talked about the meaning of 75. So since
it's almost Christmas, I thought that was worth
listening to again, so it's just a couple of
minutes. So we're going to close with Brian from
episode 44. So for now this is Neil Rapp WB9VPG
saying 7 3 7 5 and may the good DX be yours and
Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.
So Brian we've been talking for a few weeks here
on on email and I kind of told you a little bit
of the story here when I started doing the show
in February I started off with coming up with
you know some of the things that I wanted to
do some little catchphrases and stuff and and
so one of the things I always did was I signed
off with both 73 and 75 then may the good DX
be yours now that may the good DX be yours is
kind of a play on the old WKRP in Cincinnati
newsman Les Nessman that always signed off with
may the good news be yours so I kind of changed
that around and as hams we know what 73 means
it's best wishes but a lot of people have asked
me and and I admit I did this on purpose What
75 means and I've had people go and look up all
these old Western Union message codes and everything
and they're like We can't find anything about
75. We can't find anything about 75. What does
75 mean? So tonight I thought I would finally
reveal on the show although I've answered a few
emails here and there what 75 means and and you're
the guy to Fill everybody in on this. So, tell
our audience what 75 means and what its history
is. Well, you certainly have gotten the same
question we have received a number of times.
75 means, may God bless you and yours. And you're
right, it's in addition to the old telegraphy
codes popular in the 19th century. The neat thing
is, if you're doing this with a key, It's 10
quick keystrokes versus over 60 if you spell
it out. So obviously, telegraphers benefit there
to use that. We don't know how far back it goes.
The CARF group has been around for 50 years.
It was started at the North American Christian
Convention in Louisville, Kentucky, 1966. There
are 50 hams. members in that original year. 31
of those now have gone on to be silent keys,
but I had the opportunity to speak with one the
other night, one of our original founding members,
and he said 75 has been with the organization
as long as he's been with it, which is 50 years.
He doesn't remember when we didn't use it, and
he also fully believes that it was used by some
other organization. prior to our using it, but
he could not remember back those 50 years. Now,
we did look up and see that the first CARF newsletter
was signed with 75 back in September of 1966.
Thank you so much for having us on, especially
here around Christmas time, a very special time
for the Christian Amateur Radio Fellowship Network.
Thank you very much, Neil. Thanks for watching!