Need Carl & Jerry assistance...

You mentioned the disabled thing before, and I assumed you'd had some insider knowledge.

Herbert S. Brier, who wrote the amateur radio column in Popular Electronics for some time, and I think he wrote the novice column in CQ for a time, he was disabled. Don't ask me for details, but it was somewhere in one of his columns, at the least.

When you mentioned John T. Frye's disability previously, except that I thought you'd be the authority, I kind of thought you'd mixed up the two.

Now, perhaps they were one and the same. That would explain some things. I do note that they both had W9 callsigns.

Ask in one of the amateur radio newsgroups, since both were hams, and maybe there are still people about who knew either or both of them. Or try to contact an amateur radio club where he used to live, see if any old timers there remember.

Michael

I got my info straight from Les Solomon who I am absolutely convinced (three decades ago) told me he and Perry and John would sit around and vet the C&J stories for feasibility. I got the impression that the disability most certainly existed but was studiously downplayed by all concerned.

Turns out at least some of the more outrageous Les Solomon stories were absolutely true. Such as him being an Isreali Operative.

is a jaw dropper for sure.

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Many thanks,

Don Lancaster                          voice phone: (928)428-4073
Synergetics   3860 West First Street   Box 809 Thatcher, AZ 85552
rss: http://www.tinaja.com/whtnu.xml   email: don@tinaja.com

Please visit my GURU\'s LAIR web site at http://www.tinaja.com

I always enjoyed John T. Frye's writing, though I wasn't old enough to read it at the same time it was published. I'm in my late 30s and always look for his name in the table of contents of back issues of electronics magazines.

The only advice I can offer is to ask the editors of those old electronics magazines, people who actually corresponded with Frye. (You'd know which ones better than I would, Don.) I do recall asking someone at _Radio-Electronics_ or _Electronics Now_ about John T. Frye and I may still have his letter around here somewhere, just not handy at the moment. He didn't say much more than that Frye was a complete professional when it came to writing, and that he never missed deadlines.

The late Don Stoner sort of "resurrected" the Carl & Jerry stories about 10 or 15 years ago for a short-lived ham radio magazine. He essentially reprinted the stories except changed the characters to be their sons. (I think he did this so he could get away with using the same illustrations.) This magazine (the name of which escapes me) was published by the National Amateur Radio Association, which was based here in Arlington, Texas. I did some writing for this magazine but Don Stoner handled those stories and he lived out of state... I forget exactly where. I only talked to him once, on the phone. [I asked him if he had a copy of the internal schematic for the first OSCAR satellite and he said no, not offhand.]

Ah! Here we are... I've got an issue of _The Amateur Radio Communicator_ right here. This one was published in July/August 1993 and the characters have been named "Dan & Burke." Here's what Don Stoner wrote about this series: "Dan and Burke is based on a storyline created in 1954 by John Frye, W9EGV. The boys are the sons of John's original characters, Carl and Jerry. John Frye is no longer with us. But while he was alive, John was an avid Amateur Radio operator who wrote about young people -- for young people. It's doubtful that anyone could make John's stories more interesting or improve on his words. We'll settle for giving them a 1990s twist."

I don't have all of Frye's stories or articles, but perhaps we can infer a bit about the man himself from them. In particular I enjoyed his "technical fiction" stories (as I call them), in which he used a fictional setting and fictional characters to teach a genuine technical principle. It made things fun to learn. _The Mad Scientists' Club_ by Bertrand Brinley is a perfect example of this. Art Margolis (any information on him?) also write tech/fic articles that were a joy to read.

Frye was a ham and sometimes his call sign appeared in his byline, and I remember once looking that up in an old Callbook. (I'm guessing that you've done the same thing to conclude that he lived in Indiana.)

Hope this helps you for a change, Don. Your books and articles have helped me immensely in my career. Thanks!!!

Matt J. McCullar, KJ5BA Arlington, TX

There was another series of columns in Radio and TV news called "Mac's Radio Service" that was more "grownup" and dealt with the more technical and economic issues of radio and tv servicing. Also by John.

--
Many thanks,

Don Lancaster                          voice phone: (928)428-4073
Synergetics   3860 West First Street   Box 809 Thatcher, AZ 85552
rss: http://www.tinaja.com/whtnu.xml   email: don@tinaja.com

Please visit my GURU\'s LAIR web site at http://www.tinaja.com

I can't see Leslie Solomon making up that sort of story, and I would consider that more reliable than the vague "someone said". I never had a complete set of old hobby electronic magazines, but I sure don't recall reading of any disability. But then, except a note at the end of one Carl and Jerry story,

where he thanks the readers for well wishers over a recent illness, I never saw anything so personal from him. He used the characters in his stories to speak. That story was apparently in the June 1963 issue, so presumably there was mention two or three issues earlier of an illness that might give some more information to someone with a full set of back issues.

When you mentioned John T. Frye's disability here in 1999, I pointed out the disability of Herb S. Brier, but I also pointed out that John T. Frye's callsign was W9EGV and Brier's was W9EGQ, which sure seems like they were issued really close together. Two hams with very close callsigns that also write for the same magazine? They must have known each other, and that would certainly be a possible indicator of a disability. If they were both disabled, they might have been given the test by the same ham, which suggests other things in common.

As I said at that time, there were so many prolific writers for the hobby magazines back then, yet they mostly came and went without much comment or any details of themselves beyond the articles. Jim Kyle has a webpage,

I can't remember if he wrote for the hobby electronic magazines or just the ham magazines, but John Schultz W2EEY wrote an awful lot. There's sort of a mention here,

of him, but it doesn't reveal much.

Craig Anderton was less prolific in the hobby magazines (but wrote a lot for the music magazines about electronics) and he has a website at

That might be something for me to do. Go through the old hobby electronic magazines I still have, and pick out some of the common names, and do searches on them.

Wayne Green, editor of CQ and then 73 is still alive, emulating his long editorials in a blog at

I am pretty sure that story was mentioned in the obituaries when he died. I thought it did reveal a whole other side of him that we never saw while he was doing the magazine.

So much of that is long in the past. Oliver Ferrell is long gone, Popular Electronics is gone, even Gernsback. John Simonton is gone, and I seem to recall reading that Daniel Meyer had died at some point.

Michael