Yes, she was beautiful.
Yes, I had heard about Julia Child’s OAS connection. But not about Heddy.
Over time I have found a good number of FReepers are HAMS. Some like me largely inactive because of computers. But I am still interested in RF technology. (hate cell phones though)
In my prior life in military comms, I ran one of the hottest ‘rigs’ available. A full 50KW CW transmitter with a 640 acre antenna farm. Comms were a wicked 12kHz bandwidth, covering a frequency range from 5MHz (nighttime) up to 24MHz (daytime). Range was thousands of miles. This was all in the 60s and 70s - eventually replaced by satellite.
I am not a ham. However I have been doing research on software defined radio in general and the GNU software defined radio in particular. If you like radio and you like computers, just combine them!