I never met Frank though he was a close friend of
my dad who passed away last week at the age of
87. My father was a merchant marine sea captain
and he often he sailed ships where the
radio officer was also a ham radio operator. Frank,
W6VIQ lived right behind my parent's house in
Campbell California back in the early 1950s and my
father would often have the ship's radio officer
contact Frank to set up a QSO with my mom. Given
my age, 4 or 5, I was probably in Frank's ham shack
a number of times though I certainly don't
remember that.
It was only a year ago that my dad reminded me of
this story and the friendship with Frank. I looked
up his call on the QRZ but later found out he was an
SK. My dad had not talked with Frank in decades
and he was looking forward to reconnecting at the
time.
I just now checked QRZ again and see that Frank's
call sign expired in January. The interesting part of
this story is that it was pure coincidence that my
father knew that there was a ham radio operator
almost in his back yard. On that occasion of that
first QSO, the radio operator raised a station in the
general San Jose, California area for the purpose of
running a phone patch. After some dialog, my dad
realized that this ham radio operator lived in the
very same neighborhood. Frank dispatched his wife
to run over to our house to find my mom and bring
her into the shack rather than using a phone patch.
That started a relationship of several years where
Frank routinely ran message traffic for my dad
when he was out at sea.