{"id":330,"date":"2014-10-17T18:57:38","date_gmt":"2014-10-17T18:57:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wa4fat.com\/?p=330"},"modified":"2015-11-10T02:51:46","modified_gmt":"2015-11-10T02:51:46","slug":"comanches-mohawks-and-chippewa-oh-my","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wa4fat.com\/?p=330","title":{"rendered":"Comanches, Mohawks and Chippewa – Oh My!"},"content":{"rendered":"

These days, most Amateur Radio gear is identified with nothing more interesting than simple alpha-numeric designations like a\u00a0Kenwood TS-570, Icom IC-7410, or Elecraft K3, but the naming landscape was far more colorful and romantic back in the day.<\/p>\n

\"Heathkit<\/a>
Heathkit chose the Native American to anchor their Amateur Radio product line<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Heathkit, for example, chose to celebrate Native Americans with\u00a0a variety of offerings for the Amateur market. Among those were the Apache<\/a> transmitter and matching Mohawk <\/a>receiver, the Cheyenne <\/a>transmitter with the companion Comanche <\/a>receiver, and a nifty little general coverage receiver called the Mohican<\/a>. And it didn’t stop there either. \u00a0The Heathkit\u00a0 6 Meter transmitter was named the\u00a0Shawnee<\/a>, and it’s rhyming 2 Meter cousin was the Pawnee<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Continuing the theme were Heathkit Kilowatt amplifiers \u00a0Warrior a<\/a>nd\u00a0Chippewa<\/a>. And the VHF offering of the day was the Seneca<\/a>. I have no clear\u00a0explanation for the interesting Native American naming convention used by the former manufacturer from Benton Harbor, but I always enjoyed hearing those names on the air as a station\u00a0would describe his rig. I was a youngster back then, and the mention of an Apache or Comanche always triggered thoughts of Roy and Trigger, or Hopalong and Gene, and a scene from a western would often play out while I vicariously rode the range\u00a0while riding the airwaves.<\/p>\n

And Heath didn’t hold a monopoly on creative license back then either, not by a long shot. The Hallicrafters company made a short-lived line of high-powered transceivers which paid homage to the weather. These included the Cyclone<\/a>, Tornado <\/a>and Hurricane<\/a>. The later of these may be the only 2 KW transceiver ever produced.<\/p>\n

The Clegg Company, out of New Jersey, was a big player\u00a0in VHF gear throughout the 60s and chose names that were literally \u00a0out of this world. Imagine hearing something like this on a 6 Meter roundtable during the day. “Your Thor 6 <\/a>is really punching through today, Old Man, I’m running a brand new Venus <\/a>here”.\u00a0\u00a0“Your turn, Bob,\u00a0and let us know how we’re sounding on that\u00a0new Interceptor<\/a>\u00a0receiver of yours”. No, I’m not making this up. And heaven knows what Clegg was thinking when they named their 6M\/2M transceiver the Climaster Zeus<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The E.F. Johnson Company is another that obviously had a host of wacky creative talent in the product naming division during the 50s and 60s. I had the pleasure of cutting my teeth in Amateur Radio on\u00a0a Johnson Viking Adventurer<\/a>. Other wonderfully named gear from this pioneering company included the Viking Invader<\/a>, Viking Ranger<\/a>, Viking Valiant<\/a>, Viking Challenger<\/a> and the Viking Pacemaker<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Lafayette Radio had their Voyager <\/a>transmitter, Swan Radio had the Astro <\/a>and Cygnet<\/a>\u00a0transceivers, and Gonset offered the Commander<\/a>, Communicator <\/a>and Sidewinder<\/a>\u00a0to the Ham market.<\/p>\n

And no conversation about the nostalgic names of gear from yesteryear would be complete without including the many fabulous offerings from the Ten-Tec arsenal of Amateur products.<\/p>\n

The extensive Ten-Tec product line has included, or still includes, the Argonaut<\/a>, Argosy<\/a>, Century\u00a021<\/a>, Corsair<\/a>, Delta<\/a>, Eagle<\/a>, Jupiter<\/a>, Omni<\/a>, Orion<\/a>, Paragon<\/a>, Pegasus<\/a>, Rebel<\/a>, Scout <\/a>and Triton<\/a>.\u00a0And to their credit, Ten-Tec maintains a warm and friendly naming convention even to this day for many of their products, perhaps the sole practitioner of a practice that is quickly fading into the noise.<\/p>\n

I get it that all things change. Change, in fact, is the one great constant of our Universe. But I still have a warm spot in my heart for all the wonderful names of the past. And lucky for me these names aren’t lost to the historians either. All I have to do is crank out a CQ on 40 Meters most any evening, and then sit back and listen as the Apaches, Mohawks and Chippewas come back from the ether.<\/p>\n

Hi Ho Silver!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

These days, most Amateur Radio gear is identified with nothing more interesting than simple alpha-numeric designations like a\u00a0Kenwood TS-570, Icom IC-7410, or Elecraft K3, but the naming landscape was far more colorful and romantic back in the day. Heathkit, for example, chose to celebrate Native Americans with\u00a0a variety of offerings for the Amateur market. Among … Continue reading Comanches, Mohawks and Chippewa – Oh My!<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amateur-radio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wa4fat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wa4fat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wa4fat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wa4fat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wa4fat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=330"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/wa4fat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":451,"href":"https:\/\/wa4fat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions\/451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wa4fat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wa4fat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wa4fat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}