Jim and Cody

N9DIX James W. 'Jim' Jones Waverly, TN QCWA # 36679 Chapter 115

I was first licensed in 1967, I found an notice that the FCC was holding testing on a Saturday and all were welcome to take an exam for a Ham license. I was a Navy Radioman stationed on shore duty at Sandia base, Albuquerque NM. So I went down, filled out the paper work but didn't think I could do the 20wpm for Extra so opted for General. Was a little rusty. Sitting at a table with a formica top (light colored). Since I wasn't taking the test I had no paper but when it started I copied it all but one word on the table top. The examiner wouldn't let me transcribe it to paper. LOL. I didn't think I could do it but I did. Went on to take the general 13wpm and written test. Few weeks later I got the license in the mail, WA5RBU. At that time there was a bunch of locals on 2m AM that we would all point our beams to the Sandia mountain peak and we could then work each other and have a round table without having to turn our beams. Worked great.

Anyway from there I was transferred to Port Hueneme, CA for duty with the Seabees. At that time the Navy was looking for volunteers for the Bees and since I went to a trade school to be an electrician and the Radioman rate was basically locked up and couldn't advance I opted to cross rate to the electrical field. Got my 6 area call WA6YNO. After a few stints of going back and forth to Vietnam, I got overseas short duty in Scotland. I applied for and got GM5BQA and even worked GM3BQA a few times. After that I came back, family settled in Illinois and I got a 9 call, WB9QZN. At that time you could still have secondary callsigns and IIRC I had a 1 area call at my dads house, I want to say WA1PJP, but heck that was many many moons ago. Anyway they dropped the secondary calls and when I moved to a new address I also applied for the new 1x3 'N' callsigns, I got N9DIX. I figured no more. The cost of QSL cards was going up and I hated to change the callsign again, and now you don't have to change when you move. Makes it a little harder to figure out when the person your talking to is really located.

So that's some history of my doings in ham radio, in the late 60's early 70's I was in Navy Mars in CA and worked the traffic nets on RTTY. Back then you built your equipment or got it surplus. Had model 15's, 19's and 28's. Built my own jack panel for the TTY equipment to connect to, 60ma loops. That was a lot of 1/4 inch phone jacks and resistors. LOL. My last duty station was Diego Garcia and I operated as VQ9JJ along with Mike Russell (SK), who was VQ9MR. Along with one other person we made a trip to Cocos Keeling Island and operated as VK9YJ & VK9YR and I still have a bunch of those qsl cars left.

I now reside in middle TN about 65 miles Southwest of Nashville and have horses. Wife and I like to trail ride. I am an owner in a company that operates 2 railroads and even though I've retired from operations side I'm still with the company on the board of directors. I've attached a picture you can use, it's me and my horse Cody.

February 14, 2015