It was known world wide by CR6'Romeo & Juliet'. 'Juliet' never operated the station.
CR6RJ's "Romeo" enjoyed experimenting with home-made antennas. One of the most successful was a 10-15-20m ground plane vertical made with donated frequency traps and scavenged scrap aluminum tubing. The ground plane was made of scrap electrical wiring, cut to the proper lengths for those three bands.
The fine tuning was done by trimming the bottom and top sections of tubing to achieve the least stationary wave level. It was a lot of fun (and a bit of knee scraping) having to climb to the roof for each trimming after measuring the stationary level at the transmitter in the shack. Well, at least, the always tropical weather allowed for this to be done in T-shirt and shorts.
The final touch was a cork on the top end of the antenna tubing... (heavy rains there!)
Bazookas, Yagis, whips, dipoles, etc, were built and mostly enjoyed on the 2m band (144MHz) since the small dimensions made them easy to build and handle.
But then the main antenna was a purchased cubical quad that yielded extremely satisfactory results. It even allowed for QRP (low power: 2 Watts output) contacts with Europe and North America.
CR6RJ was very active on the Amateur 10, 15 and 20 meter bands, depending on the time of day and day of the week.
DX (long distance) contacts and chats (QSO's) were the preferred activity. A general long distance call (CQ DX) would generate a large amount of replies, mainly because of the exotic call sign, I'm sure. Aiming the cubical to North America would result in a pile up of replies that would take a long time to acknowledge.
The 10 meter band would be very enjoyable on Saturdays, with a huge amount of US stations eager to land a DX contact with a funny African call sign.
It was exciting to contact distant countries with strange names like Nauru and places like Rarotonga. Cards confirming the radio contact (QSL cards) were exchanged between the stations. Two of the most precious are:
1 - from the RCMP ham radio station in Ottawa; they were having a "field" day with lots of replies. Romeo had to call their attention by saying rapidily in a short opening: "How about giving Africa a chance?" It worked and CR6RJ was logged and got its RCMP QSL.
2 - from an MM (maritime mobile) whose operator advised that he could not give the name of the ship or where he was but that CR6RJ would find out when receiving the QSL card. It did arrive and it was very, very surprizing to find out that he was a lieutenant on board of a US Navy aircraft carrier, somewhere in the Pacific. Interesting to notice that the US Navy allowed ham stations on board... How about now?
CR6RJ's goal of contacting 100 different countries was not achieved: the last count, in December 1974, was of only 84.
On December 31, 1974 'Romeo & Juliet' left Angola, bound for Toronto, Canada. CR6RJ was off the air forever but Romeo & Juliet, and the good memories, will linger on also forever.
'Romeo', now, is not much of a talker. He loves to observe and take pictures...
