My Dad & Elmer - N3ADT

Few hams are without an an ELMER, and in my case, I'd identify my Elmer as my dad, Charles F. (Fred) Killmon. He didn't give me my novice test, and I'm indebted to the ham, (Joe Schorah, WA3KZX), that took me and a friend under his wing to instruct us and give us the test. But my dad really gave me "the radio bug." The first photo above is my dad taken in 1945 with a B-29 flight crew, where he served as the radio operator. He was stationed on both Tinian and Saipan. When he returned stateside after the war, he studied electronics and worked at an appliance store (they sold TVs and radios in those days), and later took courses at the University of Delaware, eventually taking a position at DuPont as an electronic technician. He was later promoted to Supervisor of a technician group, noted for taking on maintenance of especially challenging gear. He retired after serving 32 years at the Experimental Station near the Brandywine River.

Among many things, my dad got me interested in electronics and radio by obtaining a BC-348Q which was being discarded at his workplace, and giving it to me. That was my first shortwave receiver and I was about 11-years old. You couldn't see the tubes through the solid cover, but I knew they were in there. It got warm, it smelled warm, the pilot lights lit the small dial and with a 60 foot long piece of wire attached to a tree in the back yard, I cranked the dial and heard stations from all over the world from my bedroom. It was magic.

He was first licensed as WB3AFQ and later, N3ADT getting his license a few years after me. He already knew the code fromhis Army Air Force days, and eventually worked for DuPont as an Instrument Technician Supervisor (which took care of the electronics theory), so getting a license was pretty easy for him. The picture of him and my mother below was taken at one of the DuPont Christmas parties in the 1970s.

My first modern commercial rig, a Drake B-line, was left home while I was at college at R.I.T. for 3 years, so he made use of it, recently licensed himself. He bought me a 1967 Triumph Spitfire and I gave him my radio gear in payment. When I got out of school, I kept the car and he gave the rig back to me. That's typical of how he did things.

He was a hunter and fisherman, smoked cigars for many years and was a terrific card player. He especially enjoyed poker, which he played weekly for many years. He and his friends played for small stakes, but by year's end each year, he usually won enough to buy something for the shack. He used to say they "paid him for a poker lesson" each week. We shared ham radio as a hobby for over twenty years, although he was much more casual about it than I was, mostly running low power and tinkering with VHF and HF packet for a number of years. When he and my mother moved from their house into independent and later assisted living, he gave me all his radio gear, some of which went to others to get them started and some of which is still in use at K4SO.

He became a SK on June 23, 2004. RIP OM