The date it was issued is obliterated (after all, it is more than forty years old). Can you figure out the date it was issued?
I obtained a "Conditional" ("General" exam by mail) class license with the call sign K4CHK and received my General class license on October 28, 1955.
My first rig was a Hallicrafters S-40B receiver and a Heathkit AT-1 (14 watts CW) transmitter. The main antenna at first was an 80-meter dipole and the mode, of course, was CW. For the three years after receiving my license, I operated exclusively CW.
You were required to keep logbooks back in those days, and mine have survived. My first contact was on 3/11/55 with KN2KFM, on 40 meter CW. Thousands of CW contacts and QSO's (morse code conversations) in many states followed. This was very exotic territory for a boy in the backwoods of Kentucky.
On about January 9, 1956, I moved to Eminence, KY -- so-named because it was the highest point on the railroad between Louisville and Lexington -- an ideal DX location.
My amateur radio career focused on DX (exotic foreign stations) and the KYN fast traffic net on 80 meter CW. I erected a rotatable 15-meter dipole for DX and a dipole for 80 meter CW. Ultimately, I worked all (then) 48 states and received the ARRL WAS (worked all states) award. I worked all Continents (WAC).
Then life got real exciting. I started working as a newspaper boy delivering the Louisville Times each afternoon (and the Courier Journal Sunday mornings) on February 16, 1956 and was making a good living. I had about $15 in my pockets at all times. Then I got an additional job as a projectionist running movies at the Eminence theater. I was rolling in money and bought a Johnson Viking Ranger transmitter which I did put into operation May 4, 1956.
To me, this was [except for Collins stuff] the greatest of all ham transmitters. Not only was the CW crisp and state-of-the-art, but I could work AM phone!
One afternoon I was bicycling along and came upon a local telephone crew removing a telephone pole. They told me it was worn out. I asked them to drop it off at my house rather than discard it. To my amazement, they did. My dad and I dug a hole for it and got it erected with a wide-spaced 3-element 15 meter Yagi 40 feet up on it. Worked lots of DX with that Yagi But we moved from Eminence to Kinston, NC in the summer of 1957 and I had to abandon my telephone pole.
About 35 years later, I returned to Eminence, visited the manse and asked if I could tour the back yard. The minister agreed. Behold, that old, worn-out telephone pole was still standing. Now surrounded by trees taller than it was! Trees that would have impeded any 3-element Yagi from rotating up there. I got a picture of it which I share below.
I moved to Southern California in 1969, joined Rand Corporation and got busy with business. I regretfully allowed my amateur radio license to expire in the early 1970's and lost my K4CHK call sign. In the early 1990's, I got lost, which led me again to join the amateur radio hobby and which led to mom Glenna becoming N5ZYE, daughter Megan becoming KD6HVL (High Voltage Lady), and the mother, Barbi, of my youngest three children, becoming KD6OZB. Lost in The Desert
