Another Ham Radio Story circa 1954

Sharing Stories

November 7, 2022 at 1:43 p.m.

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...by Pete MacDoran

Another Ham Radio Story circa 1954

I was thirteen years old in 1954, when the United States, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued an official notice granting me an Amateur Radio (HAM) License. To this day, I retain my HAM RADIO license, K6JCB, that expires in 2028.

There was also an accompanying Official US Government Notice that stated there was to be no radio communications with an East Asian country I had never heard of, called: VIET NAM. I thought such an Asian country, was so far away from me, how could it have anything to do with me? It would come to pass that such a belief, would prove to be quite wrong.

In the Spring of 1959, I had graduated from Reseda High School. It was now the dawn of the Earth satellites pioneered by the Russian Sputniks. I was offered a laboratory technician job at Atomics International, in a suburb of the San Fernando Valley in Southern California. The management staff of this nuclear technology company was quite willing to move me around so that I would become familiar with various nuclear related aspects of this new technology.

I continued to live at my parents’ home until I married my first wife, Ann (who had gone to grade school with me). By the time of our marriage, the Viet Nam War was a huge problem in the whole of the US. My brother, Frank, had joined the US Navy, and I joined a scientific officer group that supported the US intelligence community. None of us yet knew that Viet Nam would change our lives even more…when Ann and I got a little girl who had been injured in that war. Pete MacDoran is a Washington resident and author of Amazon.com: The Old Men Will Die First: A True Story of Cold War Espionage.

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