Circa 1970         

Here are two photographs of my early station located in Sauquoit, NY.  

The first shows the equipment I used right after I received my General Class License.  Note the Ameco AC1 Transmitter, DX60B Transmitter, Knight Kit VFO (which earned me a letter from the FCC forwarded from the Canadian DOC for out of band signals), SX-71 Receiver, Heath Twoer (Novices in 1969 could operate on 2 Meters.  The AM crowd hung out on 145.35 MHz) and Raytheon CB Radio.  The antenna was every piece of wire I could find strung out across the back yard.  The DX60B worked so well that I was able to check into SSB nets with only an occasional comment made that I had a bit of carrier on the signal.

 I took some photos of the Ameco AC1 on 3 March 2006.  I didn't spend much time composing the pictures, but you can see most of the detail from the pictures I took.  The kit was assembled in the fall of 1967 and put on the air in April of 1968 when I first became licensed.  I worked 15 states on 80 Meters as a Novice with this transmitter.  Click HERE to see the pictures.

The next photo shows the Eico 753 (Eico 7-Drifty-3) rig that I used for many years.  Most of my operating time in 1970 and 1971 was spent handling messages (traffic) in nets.  The large box above the 753 (and below the Heath Twoer) is a Motorola 5V, 2 Meter FM Transceiver that was crystaled for 146.94 MHz simplex and 146.34/146.94 MHz repeater operation.  I also had a P33BAM "portable" 2 Meter rig that had been used on a railroad. 

Antenna was a 135 Ft Inverted V for HF and a 10 Element Beam Antenna for 2 Meters.