Bicycle Mobile On Two Meters Circa 1960
Best Hobby A Young Man In The 1950's Could Have!
We Did It Our Way!
Paul (WA6CJC) and Dear Ed Heyman (WA6EOA peddled
all around Cheviot Hills with this contraption - Ed and Paul rode a second bike with a full sized car battery attached via the cable!
Bicycle Mobile The Hard Way!
Paul was a Ham Radio Operator (licensed as WA6CJC). . . I can remember WA6EOA (Ed Heyman) and myself wanted to do something unique so we decided to take our radio mobile.... of course neither of us could drive so we did the next best thing!
Ed strapped his Gonset Communicator on the back of his bike, I found a 12 volt car battery and strapped it to the back of mine! We used armored house cable between the two bikes to carry the power and voila'. . . bicycle mobile!
Bicycle mobile is just that... Taking you radio and putting it on a bicycle and ride around talking ot people. No big thing you say! Not in 1959, these radios were boat anchors! A car battery would last about 2-3 hours before it died!
Checking out the settings before peddling away
Yup! Paul in Ed Heyman's driveway checking out the old Gonset III before going bicycle mobile all over Cheviot Hills on a Saturday afternoon and evening! Remember this was in the last 1950's and the Gonset was 20+ pounds and the battery was about 30!. . . We needed two bikes! I'd sure like to hear from WA6FOS ("Moose" - Founder Of Stalingrad), WA6EOB (Bob Fairfield), and WA6DSD (Name escapes me!).... it's been 30 years guys!!
Flash!!! Bob Fairfield, Ed Heyman and I met in June at Hamilton High School... Bob retired as a Colonel in the US Army Infantry! Now a lawyer in LA!
Notice the armored cabled wrapped around the Communicator
Neat old bike huh??? Wished I had it now! Notice the coiled up electrical cable we used between the bikes to allow the battery (Ed powered) to connect to the Gonset (Paul powered). It was about 20 feet long and was armored!
We Rode Around Hamilton High School
Because that's what nerdy people do duh!
Alexander Hamilton High School
Cheviot Hills
Cheviot Hills is bordered on the west by Rancho Park, on the south by Interstate 10, on the north by Century City and Westwood, and on the east by Beverly Hills. The district's boundaries are, roughly, Manning Avenue on the west, the Santa Monica Freeway on the south, Pico Boulevard on the north, and Castle Heights Avenue on the east. Principal thoroughfares include Pico and National Boulevards and Manning and Motor Avenues.
Originally a part of the Spanish Rancho Rincon de los Bueyes land grant, Cheviot Hills remained a pastoral area well into the 20th century. In the early 1920s, the area was subdivided, but significant residential development did not occur until the late 1930s,
Today, Cheviot Hills consists of a neighborhood of approximately 1400 single family homes, which tend to be more upscale in the northern part of the neighborhood, and smaller in the southern part of the neighborhood. Most of the homes were built in the 1940s and early 1950s. There are also some apartment buildings in the southern part of the neighborhood. The homes in the area are largely traditional in style.
Gonset Gooney Box
However, the most famous, and prevalent, Gonset radios were and are the Communicator series of AM transceivers for 6 and 2 meters. Gonset sold a bazillion of these. They were standard issue for Civil Defense/RACES and disaster communication. Both came in the same square, ungainly, metal box, looking a lot like something you'd keep bread in, but with SO-239 coax jacks on top. (This made a good place to screw on a whip antenna, when working outdoors in the field.) Early versions had "magic eye" tubes. Gonset also made an external amplifier, in a matching box, with the inevitable little window to look in and see how the finals (826s?) were doing.
This little radio, known affectionately as the "Goony Box," was cheap to begin with, and even more so used. However, it could stand up to portable use, and it pretty much opened VHF to hams.
Gonset didn't survive the transition to solid state. Faust Gonset sold the company to one of his suppliers, then it was sold one more time in the 60s before vanishing without a trace.
We Needed Six Volts
Necessity is the mother of invention.. I remember Ed had a knack for being able to drive a nail into a battery at the correct location in order to get 6 volts... what the old Gonset needed!
Repeaters Were Mandatory
We used the 144-148 MHz "2 meter" band. I remember we used the repeater on Mt. Lee.... I can't remember the call sign now but they were quite excited when we signed WA6EOA/M (Bicycle Mobile).
