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Robert Colee With Help from Anne Colee

They said I should have died when I was about 2 or 3 years old. We were living in Sarasota Florida at the time and my father was studying, on the G.I. Bill at Ringling school of Art
at the time.

My remembrances of this period included of my Dad's short wave radio, my (cleverly---I thought) mixing salt and pepper in the same shaker for convenience and the trouble it caused when my mother discovered it. I also remember creatively "redecorating" some of my Dad's art work much to his disapproval and the sand fight with the little neighbor girl (Brenda?).Most of all , though, I remember the sickness which engulfed both me and my parents to such an extent, that my Dad's mother, Lydia, finally had to be called for help.

It seems that my parents and I had been struck with pneumonia. My parents called for Lydia to come and take me to St. Augustine for care. Right after arriving at my Grandmothers house it was decided that I should be admitted to the hospital.

My memories of this period were filled with the sound of ambulance sirens outside the hospital window, and my Aunt Mildred, who was a military nurse. When I survived pneumonia everyone in the family said it was a miracle. Some of the medicine that was tried on me had apparently just been developed for the military in World War II. At that time the recovery rate for pneumonia was very low.

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Much later in my life, I came upon the works of Jung. I was particularly intrigued by his views
on archetypes. As one looks back at life many parallels to our legend, myths and fables emerge. As I grew up I seemed to have a grasp of the enormity of life and always vowed to write this
" science fiction story." I believe in most of what I have observed, but I realize that these are only the result of my own perceptions and belief structure. By the same token, while my friends and family experienced many of the same events, in some instances the resulting remembrance may vary. While I tell this in what I see as the truth, no event or person may be regarded as absolutely true.

From time to time this story will change reference points, temporal, spacial and mythical. Some of the events that occur are real in that there is a witness. In these events I will usually call the person by the name that I knew them by. Some of the people I know will only have a "Handle" or a made up name. Some of the events are purely fictional, made up for use of
symbolism for entertainment. "The White Light Magic Show" is an example of this. Some are pure science fiction based on a Quantum world where anything may be possible. A great actor knows that the whole world is a stage. Welcome to my stage. While I don't pretend to know all things these are my observations and perceptions. I love to toy with my concept of a "Grand Conspiracy Theory",
my firm belief is that while conspiracies do in fact exist, I believe that most are independent acts. Yes I do believe that persons operating above or below the law do bad things and they may belong to governments or organizations operating in secret. If I poke fun at certain organizations, or weave them into my tales, I do it only with the knowledge that as an American citizen I have certain rights of free expression and I do so without meaning harm to the American way of life.
I do wish that the O.N.I. would return my vintage 305 Honda motorcycle, taken from Lydia Stalnakers house in 1977, a replacement would do. You did not get the gas tank with the thirteen holes in it made by the U.F.O., I threw it away. Sorry guys. My picture of the "Mantas Man" was duplicated and placed into the U.F.O. show circuit for my own safe keeping. I'm sure that the authenticity question is still hotly debated. Since 1997 the drive diagrams have been sent to quite a few interested parties so that this information is in the public domain. A large corporation received limited files of this into their computer in 1984, for safe keeping. They have the resources for this kind of technology and I feel it will be for commercial gain not war. Look in the tape back up under my user I.D. To all the men in shadow and humanoids in concert, I sent you a bill for $10,000,000.00 for research and development. I can assume that the check is in the mail? I owe you nothing more, even when I figure that the bill is paid. Next time ask, before you take and make it rewarding, and not painful. The O.S.I would redeem my praise if the negatives and the camera that disappeared would suddenly appear on my doorstep, or the replacement of the camera would be nice( I want a good one), the negatives are not as important as the camera probably was not as still as it should have been. To all the gene splicers and breeders, I demand visitation rights with my kids, after all by them you are also my family. We may not breath the same air but we are blood related. I have been running web sites with the technology for a while now and they seem to be read often. My belief is that no secrets should exist.

From my early childhood I remember things, sometimes I feel "Alienated" in these memories. At the Surfside house when I was five, I felt that I was being observed. This was most terrifying, and I would start screaming for my parents comfort. At the Meadow Street house I saw a giant space man looking in my window. He (?) was dressed in what resembled a diving suit and was seven or eight feet tall. Hiding under my sheets I tried not to move or even breath in my terror. Hours of silent terror passed until dawn. That afternoon Edgar and I had permission to camp out in the back yard, as we were only seven or eight years old at the time and had not earned the privilege of terrorizing the wild life in the woods adjacent to our property yet. I proudly showed Edgar my spaceman's boot prints under the window. He promptly denied that the prints which were about one and a half feet long, had any thing to do with my "nightmare", as my family referred to my nocturnal visits. Instead I got some friendly ribbing and we proceeded with our camping venture.

Sometime in my 5th to 8th year Science Fiction became fashionable at our local movie theater.
Our family saw "War of the Worlds", "The Thing" and "The Day the Earth Stood Still" among other features. The theme seemed to be that there were good and bad space aliens invading Earth and that it was centered on our paranoid "Cold War Period" and the recent explosion of atomic weapons of war.

I had many nightmares during this period which my family would blame on the movies, maybe not, as the content of my dreams would for the most part be totally different from the content of the movies.

Many times late at night I would sneak into my sister's spare bed so that my fear would subside with her sleeping presence eight feet away.

10,500 B.C. I am in my royal yacht "Queen of Venus Starship", we have just arrived in a parking orbit between Mars and Jupiter. As a Prince my task is to open the black hole, so that Atlantis can escape the debris that the Coalition has thrown at our world. We had been on a mission to Mars for genetic rebuilding. There are one hundred and forty four of us in the mission. We are a team made up of Human, Martian, other humanoids and Angelic beings. Since Gina on Earth
had given me the rod of power to use on Mars, Atlantis was now vulnerable. The plan was to create an artificial worm hole to swallow up the comet. Our ship ran on beam power, some of which was beamed from our home and some which we manufactured. An elaborate relay system had been provided for us on earth and Mars in the form of pyramidal structures as well as in space in the form of satellites. On board we had a generator that cut the flux of the local system.
We formed a fleet of several ships of the same class as the "Queen" as well as some tenders and freighters. The plan was to use our crystal rod to open this artificial black hole and to stabilize and guide it. We failed. I was in my space suit out side when we lost beam power. The disk of the sun rotated in front of my visor. My communicator did not work as I tapped a distress signal on the pad. We had entered the event horizon from our worm hole, this was not planned. Falling forever, falling forever, falling forever, time ceased and became eternity.

1953-57 A.D. I woke from a dream screaming. I had been in a space suit and I was facing the sun and I would fall forever. This nightmare would repeat for years on a regular basis.

During this period I was fascinated by science and technology. Possessing a book on astronomy and the local solar system, given by my mother, was my pride and joy in the second grade. The school work was boring because I did not care to read "See Jane run, run run run." I was finding the universe instead.

By the time I was entering the 4th grade my thirst for science fiction would consume 3 or more books a week. We had a weekly run to the library for years as my thirst grew.

I would get into fights at school over my belief that man would one day go to the planets and then to the stars.
Around this time some of the books that were checked out at the library were written by one of my favorite authors Robert Heinlein. My family doctor discovered me reading these books,and told me he would beat me in a race to outer space. Eagerly I accepted his chalange and informed him that he was too old anyway, and Iwould get there first. My mother witnessed this incident and the story soon spread far and wide of my race with the good doctor. As my studies progressed I leaned towards Aeronautical Engineering and later towards Physics. Settling on a interest in Electronics my ambition to fly and later travel space never flagged. I witnessed the race for space by Russia and the United States.

!957 A.D. Sputnic! Need I say more. All of a sudden my class mates admired my knowledge of aerospace. All through this period until we moved to Sarasota Florida in 1960 we sat on the front seat of the launches from the "Cape". I know what a "Vangard"
looks like when it explodes, I have saw the whole array of our early space efforts, in both success and failure. We would watch "Echo" a large Mylar balloon echo satellite glide over on schedule.

My Training

My conversion to ARC 5 World War 2 military aircraft radios was by the hand of Lloyd Wright W4NIR, this was in 1960 in Sarasota Florida. I was a 14 year old who had a burning curiosity for amateur radio. This was started several years previously when my father helped me with a Scouting badge with the completion of a crystal radio receiver. After stringing up many long wire antenna projects we successfully received all the local A.M. transmissions as well as the nearby shrimp trawlers transmitting on the old marine band that was just above the A.M. broadcast band. Short wave it was known as then.

Upon moving from St. Augustine, Florida, I found in my new neighbor hood, a house with a
tri-band "Ham" antenna. This is one that I knew by heart because it was one featured in the
CQ and QST magazines my mother had purchased for me. Knocking timidly on the door I introduced my self to this "Amateur Radio Operator". Lloyd was a retired fireman from Dayton Ohio. As I bombarded him with questions, he patiently taught me radio communications.

Under his mentor, I passed my Federal Communication Commission test and was awarded a Novice class license, KN4NKD. I built my first C.W. transmitter out of a plastic food container,
the RF tank coil was wound on a plastic pill bottle, the affair consisted of one electron tube and was crystal controlled. With my newly built transmitter and my Knight Kit regenerative receiver
I attempted my first contact. CQ, CQ, CQ, KN4NKD!!!!!!!!!!!!
My poor receiver would drift each time I transmitted, so I would not be able to zero beat my own signal. Frustrated II called W4NIR on the phone and asked if he could even hear my signal.
He replied that he could but it had terrible key chirp. Sensing my discouragement he recommended a cheap fix to arrive at high tech. C.W.

A few days later he approached my Dad with the plan of going to a local military surplus
electronics outlet and purchasing an ARC-5 (40 meter) receiver. This would take care of the receiver drift as the aircraft radio was a stable, selective and sensitive superheterodyne.
Noticing the placard on the radio was 2 years before my own birth, I was delighted as my new radio was truly new and came in the original carton from IST birth sixteen years before.

To convert the radio for civilian use, I had to re-wire the tube heater elements to parallel.
The original configuration used 12 volt filament tubes wired in a series parallel mode to run off the aircraft system which supplied 24 volts D.C. To these filaments I applied 12 volts A.C. as the tubes cathode was isolated from the heaters. The electron tube reference book was really helpful as I had no diagram of the radio at this time. The radio also needed a phone jack to plug head phones into as the pin outs for audio went to a cockpit control head that did not come with the radio. Also the beat frequency oscillator had to have a switch installed as well as a volume control potentiometer. The 24 volt dynamoter was discarded and I built a 250 volt D.C. power supply to accompany my 12 volt filament supply. Fortunately some rudimentary conversion schematics were obtained from CQ magazine articles for some of this work.
My first contact with KN4NKG was with the ARC 5 receiver and my home made transmitter that chirped. This fellow ham had also just received his ticket and was only a few letters away
from my call.

The chirping was still a problem that would probably require a complete redesign of my junk box transmitter. ARC 5 to the rescue again! Back to the shop, where I had obtained my receiver, and quite a few lawns cut for the purchase price, I walked out with a new receiver and transmitter. They were on the 80 meter band as I had found 40 meter novice band used up at night with the Radio Moscow station on 7.175 MHZ(mega cycles back then). Conversion of the receiver was a snap this time as I had the 40 meter receiver as a bench mark. By this time I had
purchased a whole book of schematics and conversion tricks for the ARC 5 series of equipment.
The transmitter also had to have the filament string rewired as well as having a jack installed for the C.W. key. Using some transformers chokes and capacitors from a dead T.V. as well as some donated rectifier and mercury vapor regulator tubes I assembled a power supply that would run the transmitter. Unfortunately I could not yet use my transmitter as it had a V.F.O. and was 100 watts input power while the constraints of my license was for crystal control and 50 watts.
About this time my father offered to buy me a Heath Kit DX-20 transmitter if I would paint the
family abode. After doing a job that should have killed me in the Florida sun, I received and assembled my kit transmitter. The rest of that summer I spent in busy Morse code communications with my fellow radio operators.

I moved the next year to Jacksonville Florida, where I joined a local Amateur Radio Club
"The Wacky Windingers" who helped in my preparation for a "Conditional Class" license.
This would allow me to use a V.F.O. as well phone communications and more power.
Happy to be allowed to fire up my ARC 5 transmitter, long nights were spent for several weeks
as I basked in the Violet Glow of the mercury vapor regulators each time I went into transmit mode. As I was gleefully acquiring other ARC 5 transmitters and researching the merits of single side band versed double side band over A.M. as well as building and coupling modulators the neighbors came to call. Seems that they just wanted to watch "Bonanza on the tube and my T.V.I. was a little much. Having found the disturbance of their T.V. gun play in the preponderance of antennas sprouting from my parents roof, I was asked nicely to clean up my act on the local airways.

At this time I decided to acquire a Knight Kit V.F.O. to control my new Heath Kit transmitter.
The neighbors loved this very much and I assured them that I was working on various filters and capacitors to correct the "Bonanza"problem.

About this time I decided to do a science fair project in school on radio communications.
At first I decided to build a receiver using electron tube technology patterned after the R. L. Drake 2B S.S.B. receiver that my friend used.

I wrote off to Drake and they even sent me the schematics. Finding the mechanical filters problematic to reverse engineer out of my junk box, I decided to acquire a larger junk box. By this time I was taking a course in electronics at my local high school "Terry Parker H.S." The instructor was usually just a few pages ahead of the lesson plan as he was a metal shop educator who had been pressed into service to teach electronics. I was appointed shop foreman and helped with tutoring my fellow students. Writing off to Electro Mechanical Research in Sarasota( where I had been given a tour in my scouting days), I requested that any spare parts be donated to my school. About a month later I was escorted into the principles office and given a huge container of Titan Missile parts. Gold plated transistors made for the Space Program were in my hands. After turning these parts into my class all of us dived on the box and sorted out parts for our individual projects. Eventually I had a working triple conversion radio receiver made of 23 transistors and if bought at military prices the components would have cost over $1000.00 at 1963 rates. I Know I priced each part E.M.R. had sent us.

I did not win the science fair prize but it did win a cash prize and a medal in the Florida Industrial Arts Contest which was presented to me at graduation much to my surprise.

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