License to Ham

K6SPY ham radio cartoon QSL by N2ESTYes, his name really is Bond. James Bond.

Some QSLs just design themselves, and this was one of them. When James, K6SPY (yes, that really is his call sign, too) commissioned me to create a cartoon QSL for him, I knew exactly what I needed to do: Go full-on James Bond, shaken and stirred.

I started with the call sign, eventually finding a font I could modify to mimic the 007 logo. The name and QTH are set in a font called 007 GoldenEye. And the background is a stock image of the iconic “gun barrel sequence” at the beginning of every Bond movie.

Drawing James himself was easy: I simply copied the classic Sean Connery pose, arms folded, gun over the shoulder — except this gun is a soldering gun.

Did I mention that designing this was a lot of fun?

 

Muscle car QSL

K4BFH ham radio cartoon QSL by N2ESTRyan, K4BFH, loves his Ford Mustang. His XYL loves training horses. Could I combine the two on a QSL?

I enjoy drawing cars, so I got to work creating a simplified version of his Mustang. This particular car, though, presented a special challenge: How do you illustrate a black car using black outlines? My solution was to lighten up the black slightly and then define the edges of the car with shine and shadow. It works well enough, in a cartoon sort of way. That’s Ryan at the wheel.

Ryan’s wife appears in the background. If the horse’s pose looks familiar, there’s a reason — it’s the same pose used by Ford for its classic Mustang badge. The font used for Ryan’s callsign also comes from that logo and badge. This QSL is all Mustang, all the way.

Pin-up QSL

N2ZEB ham radio cartoon QSL by N2ESTYou’re probably wondering why the girl in my latest custom QSL looks like she belongs in an Archie comic — right?

There’s a story behind that.

A few months back, Vartan, N2ZEB, asked me to draw a QSL for him with a pin-up girl in it, Vartan’s other hobby being pin-up photography. For inspiration, I went back to one of my artistic heroes, long-time Archie Comics artist Dan DeCarlo. He drew Archie and the gang for more than 40 years and very much defined their look. If you’ve read an Archie comic any time from the 1950s to the 1990s, you’ve almost certainly seen DeCarlo’s work — or, at least, work by other artists trying to imitate him. The illustration of The Archies singing group that graced their first album is classic Dan DeCarlo.The Archies by Dan DeCarlo

What most people don’t know about DeCarlo, though, is that before Archie, he earned a living drawing girly cartoons like the one below for “gentlemen’s magazines.” Yes, really.

DeCarlo’s pre-Archie cartoons are fairly tame by 21st-century standards, but the girls he drew were undeniably sexy. Ever wonder why Betty and Veronica were so stacked? It’s because DeCarlo had a lot of practice drawing girls that way. For Archie, he actually (and appropriately) reined it in a little bit.

Dan DeCarlo pinupAnd that’s where I was challenged — I’m so accustomed to drawing “cute” that “sexy” isn’t quite in my artistic arsenal. I’m happy with N2ZEB’s QSL as far as I could take it, but, honestly, it ended up looking more like Betty all dolled up than the kind of girl that would provoke wolf whistles in one of DeCarlo’s classic pin-up cartoons. At least you can take her home to meet mom. You might even be able to talk her into getting a Tech license!

 

Ham radio Christmas

Atlanta Ham Christmas cover by N2EST Hamtoons
Atlanta Ham Christmas cover by N2EST Hamtoons

Back in the 1980s, I drew several Christmas covers for The Atlanta Ham, the official newsletter of the Atlanta Radio Club, my home club at the time. The first one (with the green background) appeared in 1986, the second in 1989.

Enjoy … and Happy Holidays to all of my ham-radio friends.

The invisible crown

Despite the cartoon, today’s post is a bit of bait-and-switch. It isn’t about ham radio. Instead, it’s about Thanksgiving.

Below is a column I wrote a few years back during my previous life as a small-town newspaper editor. It wasn’t written as a Thanksgiving column per se, but it certainly works as one. If this essay speaks to you, feel free to share it — and Happy Thanksgiving.

This column originally appeared in The News Observer, Blue Ridge, Georgia, on Aug. 24, 2016.

 

“Health is a crown on a well person’s head than only an ill person can see.” — a really old saying

This morning I woke up with the usual aches and pains. It feels odd to say that, because until relatively recently they weren’t all that usual.

When I was in my teens and 20s, I could move non-stop, and I did. In college, if a paper was due the next day, I could stay up overnight and write it; all I needed was sufficient caffeine and a typewriter. I worked third shift for a time, and I didn’t miss a beat. And while I’ve never been much of an athlete, physical activities were a breeze: I could mow any lawn, no matter how big the yard, no matter how hot the heat. I was a regular Master of the Universe.

People older and wiser would occasionally caution me to take better care of myself. One of my first bosses told me about how he was so much into his career at first that he thought he could live off of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. That strategy didn’t last for long. He eventually made himself sick before he wised up and ate better.

But did I pay attention? Not really. I though people older than me who moved slower were, well, just slower.

When you’re young, you think you’re bulletproof. You take your health for granted.

The first obvious clue that maybe I wasn’t bulletproof came in my 40s with a storyboard deadline that required I work 36 hours straight to beat it. It’s not unusual in many businesses for the last workers in the food chain to make up for time lost by those above them, but in video production the challenge is especially acute.

I did hit the deadline, but I’m sure I looked like a zombie when I turned in the boards. Ten years earlier, I could have recovered from something like that in maybe a day. That time, it took me a week to feel normal again.

Age 50 seemed to be the magic number, the line of demarcation. Heavy objects were a lot harder to hoist without feeling it later in my back or knees. Hypertension — the medical term for high blood pressure — reared its head. And mowing the lawn in hot weather without a break? Those lawns seemed to get bigger, and the breaks became more frequent.

None of this is uncommon among people my age, of course, but because every malady these days has to have a name so insurance companies will cover them, I jokingly call mine OLD Syndrome. The real “syndrome,” though, may just be my human nature. I took for granted a blessing I had — the health of youth — and noticed it only when it started to slip away. That crown on my head was invisible to me until I started to lose it.

That made me wonder about other good fortune, blessings, whatever you want to call them, I have that I take for granted, things that I didn’t earn but, honestly, just lucked into.

I grew up in a middle-class family where Dad was never unemployed and I never went wanting for anything I needed. I received a solid education every step of the way, first in Catholic schools and then at the University of Georgia. I was born with skills that I never asked for, that I did nothing to earn. I may have worked hard to sharpen what I had, but the skills themselves were luck of the genetic draw. And would I have had the time or energy to sharpen those skills without the advantages that a stable home, a good education and enough money in the bank provided? Perhaps not.

The truth is, I’ve been really blessed. The less flattering truth is that I’ve often taken my blessings for granted and assumed that I earned every success I’ve had solely through the sweat of my brow. And the ugliest truth of all? Sometimes, in my worst moments, I assume that if someone hasn’t worked as hard as I have, they deserve to be stuck in the hole where they reside because they haven’t worked as hard as I have.

That’s not always true.

Most days, I try to count my blessings. When I do, that invisible crown is a lot easier to see when I look in the mirror.

Bigfoot sighting

K7QI ham radio cartoon QSL by N2ESTEver seen Bigfoot on a QSL card before? Me neither. Until now.

Jim, K7QI, lives in the Pacific Northwest and wanted something unique to his region. Bigfoot reputedly lives there, so why not put Bigfoot on Jim’s QSL card?

That’s exactly what I did. He’s sitting there sending CW on a cartoon approximation of Jim’s Elecraft rig. And because Bigfoot sightings are rare, I drew a squirrel in there to take a picture of him. Now you know what that Summits on the Air station from Washington looks like …

K7QI ham radio cartoon QSL back by N2ESTThe back of Jim’s card is as personalized as the front. I offer two report forms: a generic one that fills only half the card and allows mailing your QSL as a postcard, and a more complete one like this. Most clients go for the more complete report form. It includes a state map with your QTH marked, complete QTH information, your call sign set in a style that matches the art where possible, and whatever logos you care to include. Most clients go with the ARRL diamond and perhaps their home club’s logo, but Jim went for logos that highlighted his military experience and his involvement with the National Rifle Association. If it fits, I can give you any logo you want — and it’s included in the price of your card.

 

A KISS QSL

KK4DYX ham radio cartoon QSL by N2ESTThese his-and-hers QSL cards are oldies but goodies, created about three years ago, that I recently reprinted with new QTH information. They’re two of my favorites.

Mark, W4BOG, first contacted me to create a custom QSL for his better half, Sharon. She liked photography, hiking, and ham radio. Could I mash that up in one QSL? I did — and I included a few curious squirrels for comedy relief.

Soon thereafter Mark commissioned a QSL card of his own. It turned out Mark was a huge fan of the rock band KISS. He’d collected tons of KISS memorabilia over the years, including an original painting by guitarist Paul Stanley. Mark wanted a caricature of himself on his QSL, wearing Stanley’s “Starchild” makeup. Oh, and could I include Mark’s Yorkie, Tobey, on the card?

W4BOG KISS-themed ham radio cartoon QSL by N2ESTThis one was fun. In addition to making Mark a ham-radio Starchild, I rendered his call sign in the style of KISS’s logo. Finally, I added Tobey, decked out like Gene Simmons, tongue and all.

As I mentioned, these cards were reprinted when Mark and Sharon recently moved to Georgia. I offer free updated QTH info if needed on all Hamtoons reprints, free of charge. The only cost is the cost of printing new cards.

Exit, pursued by a bear

W7CBA ham radio cartoon QSL by N2ESTSteve, W7CBA, lives in Montana and likes the great outdoors. Can you draw me being chased by a grizzly, he asked? Sure, I said. And thus began this QSL card.

I changed it up a little, with Steve fleeing in panic while the bears size up his abandoned handi-talkie and backpack. Next thing you know, the bears are going to want to get their Tech licenses. (By the way, there’s a really good Tech study guide that just came out with illustrations by N2EST. I imagine the bears will either find it helpful or delicious.)

For extra points: Who recognizes the source of the above headline? Hint: He wasn’t a ham-radio operator but did have something to do with Hamlet.

A Western Union QSL

Jack, K4ITE, was a life-long employee of Western Union, and he wanted a QSL card that told its story.

In Jack’s words:

“I started working at WU in September of 1965 when I was 19. I began in the Installation Department and traveled all over the Southeast before Uncle Sam came calling. After four years in the Air Force I resumed my career and went to work at the Marine Base in Albany, GA in a very secure government switching center Western Union and RCA built and partnered on called Autodin. That system used a new technology at the time called “packet switching” which broke a message into several pieces and routed the various parts for security reasons via several different paths before being reassembled at the destination. Packet switching today is the backbone of the internet.

“In 1974 I was fortunate to go to work on our Westar project, America’s first domestic communications satellite system, and was trained on working in our various earth stations. My primary job was to maintain five microwave relay stations between Atlanta and it’s associated earth station just a few miles north of Scottsboro, Alabama. The satellites were in geosynchronous orbit, and the output power was only 5 watts in those days, so the earth station locations had to be in a natural bowl for RF quietness and away from cities, thus the requirement for a 52 ft. diameter dish. Those were interesting times. I finished up my 23 year career in a Telex switching center in Atlanta.”

That was just one email from Jack. He was understandably passionate about Western Union’s place in communication history and wanted a QSL that said so. It was my job to create it.

We eventually narrowed Western Union’s history down to three phases: messages delivered by pony, messages delivered by Morse code, and messages delivered by Westar satellite. Using reference images found on the Internet, I created a collage of the three, with Jack’s call sign looming large overhead. Jack wrote a brief blurb for the back of his card summarizing Western Union’s legacy to go along with it.

To give his QSL the feel of history, Jack asked me to print it on parchment. I work only with glossy stock but was able to use a texture overlay that looked like parchment.

Today, Western Union is a shadow of its old self, its name now associated with money transfers for those who can’t afford a checking account. In its time, though, Western Union was America’s first communications giant. I hope this QSL is a fitting reminder.

Moose on the loose

Østerdalsgruppen av NRRL logoHams like to work local landmarks into their QSL cards and club logos. It’s not every day the landmark in question is the world’s largest steel moose.

Norwegian amateur radio operator Knut, LA9DSA, contacted me for his radio club, Østerdalsgruppen av NRRL, to ask if I could do something with said landmark (pictured below). Unveiled just a few years ago, the metal moose is 33 feet tall and located in a rest area along the road between Oslo and Trondheim; its name is Storelgen. The idea behind it is to remind drivers to be careful not to hit moose crossing the road. Also, it just looks really cool. I went with silver and blue to make the logo appropriately metallic — with headphones and a boom mike, of course.

Storelgen, the world's biggest mooseBefore this metal moose was erected, the biggest moose sculpture in the world was 32-foot-tall Mac the Moose in Saskatchewan, Canada. According to one website, rumor has it the Canadians want to reclaim the record by building an even bigger moose. When that happens, I look forward to creating that local club’s logo as well.

Postscript: Since 2017 when I created the logo, the moose rivalry has drawn the attention of The New York Times. This article appeared in January 2019.