Re: [IRCA] Names from the past

I overnighted with Raleigh Biss in Palm Springs on my West Coast bus tour after getting out of the Army in 1958 ... there's a photo I took then that's on the aforementioned NRC picture spread ... that same night, Vickie Biss, then 14, was hosting a slumber party ... she came with Raleigh and his wife to the Amarillo convention in 1961, and a lot of the younger NRC'ers sort of forgot about DX. Raleigh was an electrician and did a lot of work for the stars who had homes in Palm Springs. I particularly recall his mentioning rewiring the home of Andre Kostelanetz and his wife, Lily Pons.

There also are a couple of pictures I took of Ted Vasilopoulos from 1958 on the NRC website, along with John Alexander. Alexander had moved to California from West Virginia and was later to become a noted ham DX'er as K6SVL .. an active contester before his death. I (KA9SPA) had just one quick contest QSO with John in the '80s. I would run across K6EID from time to time in contest activity, Phil Finkle, who was another one of the young, talented SWBC DX'ers from that era. Phil, I learned recently, has an interesting website, with a lot of '50s era SWBC and BCB QSLs. I also learned from K6EID's website that Dave Morgan K6DDO and Mike Christie, two other teen-age SWBC whiz kids from Southern California in those days, have both passed away. I'd never met them personally.

Vasilopoulos built his receiver, along boat-anchor lines, and he had his own DX'ing rules. He wouldn't count a station in his log unless he had 30 minutes of programming ... imagine imposing that rule upon yourself today. When I joined NRC in '56, one of the controversies that was ongoing in Ernie Cooper's Musings column involved Vasilopoulos's contention that Roy Millar's use of preset tape to record overnight DX was cheating. He called Roy "The Sleeping DX'er of Issaquah." Millar didn't have much choice, though; his wife made it a major issue that he could not get up in the wee hours to DX. I enjoyed both Ted and Roy ...

I thought I'd invented DX'ing in 1947, and it wasn't until 1950, when I found Ken Boord's Intl. shortwave column in Radio and Television News that I realized I and a few of my classmates at Corvallis High School weren't alone. I joined NNRC and URDXC in 1955, and it's just dawned on me that I let the 50th anniversary of my joining NRC (March '56) slip by without some celebration. I did not join NRCI in 1963 but when it became IRCA, I joined, and have been an off-and-on member ever since. It's a strong testimonial to the tenacity of us DX'ers that both clubs remain alive and vibrant, but it's sad that we don't seem to be attracting many teen-agers (if any) into our ranks today.

Qal R. Mann, Krumudgeon