How it all began

After my initial interest in electronics (will be in another post), sometime in 1980's my brother and I were given a pair of 27 MHz walkie talkies. I could have been 8 or 10 years old.

Those walkies worked on 27.145 MHz, an "alpha" CB channel used also for remote controls. The microphone was the loudspeaker itself. The receiver was broad, very broad but sensitive: I could hear truck drivers on channel 5 (27.015 MHz) from kilometres away.

With no understanding of frequencies or channels, my mother and grandparents took me along the truckers' road trying to talk with them. No success, of course.

I don't remember if it was the very same Summer or the next, I got a 3 channel portable CB, then followed by a CTE Alan 48 which gave me my first sporadic-E DX on channel 34 FM with an Austrian station.

Yesterday my mother asked me what to do with those walkies, "Gig Bravo 2000": no way they're going to the recycle bin!

I am tempted at replacing the XTAL and try some extreme HF AM portable operation...