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 Previous: Mir's Execution Date Set |  Next: In Brief |
By Thomas B. Ballard, W3BVN
Contributing Editor
January 17, 2001
A battery powered QRP rig is heard round the world
My father Lyttleton Ballard, the original holder of the call W3BVN, was an avid DX chaser. Having struggled to make rare DX contacts over the years, he yearned to be on the other end of the pileup at least once. Was there a place, he wondered, close to home, that had not yet been discovered by the Amateur Radio fraternity? In 1950 the French islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, located off the coast of Newfoundland, seemed to be the answer.
The station in the hotel room on St. Pierre. Note the myriad front-panel tuning knobs. |
The islands had the prefix FP8 (now simply FP), and they were considered truly rare DX, since there was never a permanent amateur presence there. Jack duBois, W3BXE, put FP8AA on the air for a short time, but only a few hams were able to snag him. Here was a place that had great potential and was relatively close to home.
St. Pierre, the more populous of the two islands, could be reached by either airplane or boat. Unlike today, both a passport and a visa were required for a visit to the islands. Father went to Washington, DC, and obtained both on the same day. The most important documents to be obtained were authorization to operate an Amateur Radio station on St Pierre, and a call sign. He mailed the requests to the governor of the islands.
Building the Rig
In May of 1950 father decided to build a battery-powered transmitter and regenerative receiver that he could operate independent of the islands' unreliable commercial power. Sixty-hertz electrical power was only available in the main city, and only from sunset to 11 PM; private generators provided power at other times.
 The schematic of the 4-W transmitter and regen receiver. [Photos by the author] |
He sketched out a design and began construction immediately. Toward the end of June the transceiver was ready for testing. By today's standards it was the ultimate example of simplicity. Housed in an 8× 11×7-inch metal box and built mostly with parts from the junk box, it operated with only four vacuum tubes, two 3A5s and two 3D6s.
The transmitter put out 4 W CW and was crystal-controlled on 14.020 MHz. It used a 7.010 MHz oscillator driving a keyed doubler that drove a push-pull power amplifier. Knobs on the front panel could adjust all tuned circuits. A milliammeter was used to monitor grid, screen and plate currents.
The receiver used a single 3A5 tube, the same type of twin triode used in the transmitter. The circuit was a regenerative detector, followed by an audio amplifier. This design was second nature to anyone who, like my father, had been an amateur in the early 1930s. Safety standards, however, were a minor consideration. For instance, the key operated at 112.5 V, and the headphones--constructed mostly of metal--were hot at 90 V. The operator had to be alert and pay attention to details!
A cardboard box full of batteries was the source of power. The A battery, for filaments, was a pair of common #6 (1.5 V) dry batteries in parallel. The B battery, for plate voltage, was obtained from five 45 V batteries in series which provided 225 V for the power amplifier. The C battery, for grid bias, was a single 22.5 V battery with multiple taps. All other needed plate and screen voltages were derived from 22.5 V taps on the B batteries.
The antenna to be taken to St. Pierre was a half-wave Zepp, fed with a quarter-wave, 600-ohm; open-wire transmission line. Father thought that this type of antenna would be easy to attach to whatever supports might be available on the island.
The first test of the rig took place at home on June 25, and the results were not encouraging. It took two hours to make the first contact. Of course, the transmitter was operating on a fixed frequency of 14.020 MHz, and the weak signal W3 call sign was not enticing. My father made a desperate phone call to a nearby friend to find out whether the signal could be detected with his receiver. He was assured that, indeed, there was a good signal. Several more days of operation yielded three dozen contacts, including one with PY1ASV.
 The FP8AF QSL card my father had printed. |
Permission Granted
On June 28 a very supportive letter arrived from the governor of St. Pierre authorizing the call sign FP8AF. It was time to buy a new set of batteries, pack up the gear, and head for the island. I was 11 years old, and my participation in the trip had consisted mostly of helping to cut antenna wire to the correct length and holding the chassis while father drilled holes by hand. Now I was to be rewarded by making the trip with him to St. Pierre!
An unexpected difficulty occurred at Canadian border. We made an honest declaration of items in the car, but it produced an unexpected response from the customs official. He said: "You cannot bring that radio transmitter into Canada." Father explained that we were just passing through Canada to St Pierre. He showed the official the letter from the governor of St. Pierre giving authorization to operate an Amateur Radio station and assigning a call sign. Convinced that the transmitter was no threat to Canadian national security, the officials renamed our metal box a "signal generator," and let us pass into Canada.
Arriving at Sydney, Nova Scotia, we found a guesthouse where my mother and sister could stay. My father and I boarded an airplane for St. Pierre. The airplane, then operated by Maritime Central Airways, was the military equivalent of a DC-3 that must have been purchased on the military surplus market. Passengers sat facing each other on metal benches that ran along the sides of the plane's interior. We could see nothing but the passengers staring at us from the other side.
Following a 50 minute flight we landed on a dirt runway and saw the French tricolor flying from the flagpole. A large dump truck came out to the landing strip to collect the baggage, but the passengers walked to the terminal building. We stayed at the Hotel Robert, which in 1950 was a well-established hotel. The proprietor was acquainted with the needs of radio amateurs.
It turned out that ham radio author and technical whiz Bill Orr, W6SAI, was in residence on the third floor and had been operating as FP8AC for about a week (the hotel had a generator, and Orr ran his gear from the ac mains). We were given a room down the hall from Bill's. It had a window overlooking a side street. It was an easy matter to string our Zepp antenna from the hotel roof, across the street to an adjacent building.
At 4:30 PM on July 18, 1950, FP8AF went on the air. Gone were the problems encountered back home in W3-land, where a CQ had brought only a sparse response. The FP8 call sign brought instant replies to our 4-W signal. By midnight there were more than 120 contacts in the log. Sorting stations in the pileups challenged the capabilities of this simple station, but my father's years of experience paid off.
 The WAC certificate, 324 QSL cards, and spare 3A5s. |
Thirty Countries and WAC
We contacted 30 countries and logged a total of 324 contacts in three days of operating. It appeared that we could qualify for Worked All Continents if a QSL card from the single Asian contact, UA9CC, materialized. We made multiple contacts on all the other continents. I remember that the #6 filament batteries finally needed replacement, and a local hardware store had just what we needed.
The days on St. Pierre were mostly devoted to operating, but we did take time to visit the government-run printing office and have 500 QSL cards printed for delivery before we were to depart for home. I have memories of the fine French cuisine at the Hotel Robert, where each dinner place setting included a stack of three plates under a soup bowl, and each plate was put to good use. I had my Kodak Baby Brownie with me, and I photographed the radio station in our room.
An attractive, alternate way to return to Canada from St. Pierre was to take the overnight freighter, the M/S Miquelon, which made the trip periodically. It was scheduled to make sail on the day we were ready to leave, so we joined Bill Orr and his wife for the return trip. I noted that the ship was being loaded with codfish, at that time a major export of St. Pierre. The next day we rejoined my mother and sister in Sydney and drove back to Maryland.
 The author, Tom Ballard, W3BVN, during a visit to the ARRL booth at the 2000 Dayton Hamvention and ARRL Convention. [ARRL Photo] |
There's not much left of FP8AF after 50 years. The set was discarded decades ago when we cleaned out the radio shack. The WAC certificate, letter from the governor, the station log, some spare 3A5 tubes and QSL cards, which arrived in droves, including one from UA9CC, still survive. For me this trip was a great adventure, and memories of it are indelible. Shortly after we returned home, I built a regenerative receiver with father's guidance and was thrilled to be able to tune in distant stations. Thus, a lifetime hobby was passed on from father to son.
Editor's note: Tom Ballard, W3BVN, lives in Silver Spring, Maryland. His previous call sign was WB3FNQ. In April, 2000 he upgraded to Amateur Extra Class and acquired his father's original call sign. Ballard, an engineer, retired from the Naval Surface Warfare Center, White Oak, Maryland in 1994. He now serves as the librarian for the Historical Electronics Museum in Linthicum, Maryland. The museum has a club station Amateur Radio call sign, W3GR.
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