From the original post: "For a really great piece of writing, though, see QST for January, 1946, page 25." A total non-sequitur. It really sounds like a continuing conversation from the start. ...And to answer your question(s) No to both.
Rod Newkirk was the original W9BRD. "Christmas 1944" is a story which appeared in QST just after WW2 ended. He went on to be the DX Editor for QST.....and pulled off an amazing trick for ~30 years. He wrote comedy, philosophy, psychology, commentary, news, history, fiction, nonfiction, technology, poetry, and more....all disguised as a DX column. Great stuff.....but one has to read it... The call W9BRD is now held by Dave Newkirk, his son.
During my first of two QSO's with Rod, W9BRD, I mentioned that there should be a collection of his writings in a book. He replied "That’s a lot of QST's". This was well before the Internet made it possible, at least for ARRL members, to look them up themselves. I believe I have checked every archived May QST to read the DX Hoggery and Poetry Depreciation Society.
The Rod Newkirk Collection is it, so far as I know. He wrote several articles for the publication I briefly did in the 1980s -- Enjoying Radio -- most of which were later run in QST. I'll have to get those up on my web pages, along with a few of my own (under the title "It Came From a Radio") that were originally published in Glenn Hauser's Review of International Broadcasting in the early 1980s.
A clarification: W9BRD as held my dad was an old call sign reassigned. The "A Brief History of the W9BRD Call Sign" section at the bottom of my page at http://dpnwritings.nfshost.com/ej/w9brd/ provides details. I have since obtained a QSL card from his first few months on the air and will add an image of it to that page as time allows.
You have good clues in this thread. Just search, read, integrate. But here's a point of leverage: At www.arrl.org, in the Website Search box, type "w9brd sk" (without the " characters) to find the obit they did on his passing in 2012. Read that, then follow more clues. Google-searching can be your friend. Then maybe on Ebay or at a hamfest, obtain some actual copies of QST from, say, the 1950s and/or early 1960s, and read the column titled "How's DX?" Find anything written by Byron Goodman, W1DX -- his earlier call sign was W1JPE, but the obit errs in that Dad took over "How's" not from Goodman--the originator of the column (and one of the fathers of the DX Century Club) in the late 1930s--but from Joe Grahn, W1CH, who edited the column for a few months before the press of other activities compelled him to pass the baton. (In my pages at http://dpnwritings.nfshost.com/ej/first_w9ves/, you can read a "How's DX?" lead from 1969; it celebrates the ham life of my late uncle Phil Simmons, W9VES. The next time someone complains about "appliance operators," point them to that page.) But don't stop there. Read the tech articles; read the ads; "The Communications Department"; read "Happenings of the Month"; read contest write-ups; enjoy the cartoons and covers by "Gil" (Phil Gildersleeve, W1CJD). Get a copy of Two Hundred Meters and Down and let its coverage of the early days inform and enliven you. Now you're touching the ham radio, and learning from the ham-radio people and events, that brought us to this day. There is much more to ham radio than obsessing about lids, Winlink, ARRL, Technician refarming and FT-8. The radio itself remains fun. It has a history that's also fun to learn about and rich in people, places, events and traditions. When our conversation turns to that history and the presence and action in that history of those who illuminated ham radio for us, we tend to glow a little more brightly. Thanks for asking!
Great advice! W9BRD did not write the following. Who can figure out the author? "Thousands of miles of black, tumbling ocean intervened. Outside, the two great towers, outlined irregularly in white, rose up and up into the swirling snow; downstairs the input reactors sang monotonously in the ghastly glow of the rectifiers. The filaments of the push-pull stage in the 7-mc. amplifier imparted a dull radiance to the polished edges of the neutralizing condenser discs. All were waiting, ready to hurl the dynamite." "Downstairs, the pair of 204-A's, no respectors of persons, fired skyward all the savage energy that 4400 volts could impart. At every closure of the relay, the burnished plates of the tank condenser paled fitfully in the semi-darkness." ---- ""......and tell daddy not to forget about my check - all my love - signed Henrietta AR BK BK QRX seven min for Nr. 847 AR" "R," thundered the dynamic speaker. Swinging around, he pressed the signal button on the control panel. The horn in the basement barked. Stand clear for change over! There was an interval. Safety switch open on one of the power enclosures." There's writing, and then there's WRITING. 73 de Jim, N2EY
