My Experiences in the Civilian Conservation Corps, and How I learned Telegraphy and Became a Radio Amateur and a

Amateur Radio Station W4CRA - Capt. Phillips’ fabulous 1 KW station was brought from Ft. Barrancas, where I had helped him do some work on it while a student there. The radio frequency rack is on the left, and the class B modulator rack is on the right, but is not shown in the photo. The unit on top of the RME-69 receiver is a RME DB-20 preselector, which made the receiver far more sensitive. The small box to the left of the receiver is an “electron coupled oscillator” (ECO), which allowed the transmitter frequency to be set to any frequency in the amateur bands. Capt. Phillips had an excellent technical radio background, but was not a good telegraph operator. Instead, he used a microphone. He operated primarily on 20 meters, and he enjoyed contacting foreign stations. In those days, the transmitting components were large and very heavy, especially the transformers. Today, a station having the same power will fit into two relatively small desk-mounted cases. One would be a transceiver, and the other an RF power amplifier. . The class B modulator equipment would not be required today as a modern amateur radio station using voice would use single sideband modulation (SSB) instead of class B, amplitude modulation (AM).

Radio Station WUGO, Auburn, Ala., with Dalton Hildreth at the operating desk. - The installation, which uses an 80 watt Harvey 80T transmitter and a RME-69 receiver is identical to the standby station at WUMA, which was also used as a radio amateur radio station with the call W4EQI.

Left -- Thurston L. Lee (W5GOH) - He sent me this photo of him when he was the operator at WUGE, Sulphur Springs, Florida. He was one of the best operators in the net. He already had his amateur radio license when I went to WUGA.