Stew Gillmor '60, W1FK, on W6YX history

November 12, 2002

I have no photos of the early ham radio station at Stanford. I do have (and it's already published in Stanford alum magazine about 10 years ago, and is available at Stanford News Service) a photo of Terman with his spark station at his campus home in 1917. The first "ham" radio on the Stanford campus was by Cyril Elwell ('07, Engr. '08) who hung his antennas from old engineering building 500 to main quad buildings until the acting president threw him off campus. Several faculty member's kids (including sons of engineering professor Charles Marx and of geology professor Branner) had ham stations in Palo Alto c. 1910- and after.

Wm. T. "Bill" Sumerlin not only was active in W6YX in the mid-30s, he was also involved in setting up Stanford's ionospheric sounder c. 1936-8 (along with Nathan Hall, who left in 1937) and this work was continued especially by Villard 1938- and by R. A. Helliwell after 1940. M.G. Morgan developed a portable auto transmit/receive antenna c. 1940 which Terman mentioned to U.S. Government as useful invention. There is a photo of Villard, and of Helliwell taken from Stanford Alum Magazine about 1941; with ionospheric equipment.  This I have reproduced and it's on the wall outside of Helliwell's office in 3rd floor Packard EE Building. The ionospheric station began in basement of Ryan lab; then moved next door to the ham shack building which Villard and Cameron Pierce built (using Villard's money) in 1939. The W6YX shack was also the ionospheric sounder building during WWII. Terman always proudly listed the W6YX shack in the Stanford Course Bulletin and Catalog as being among the "research labs" in EE. This listing occurred roughly  from 1939 at least until 1948 or longer.

During my years of occasionally being around W6YX (1956-60), the KW-1 was in seriously modified condition, having been used by Villard for his SSB experiments. I remember the front panel was modified or butchered up and we watched the final plates glow.  I remember using it on 20m AM. Since I was always fooling around with radio, I had my own stuff to do and didn't go much to W6YX. A bunch of us current and former engineering students (mostly staff at KZSU) got surplus Calif Highway Patrol 6 meter FM rigs. (807 in final). Single channel crystal controlled and we returned them to ham 6meter FM band and drove around with them in our cars, mostly working locals. I was always running down my battery since the generator couldn't keep up with the big drain, even when I was running the car..

In fact, my solar radio noise site 1959-60 used an old meteor radar site trailer and tower of Bob Mlodnosky. That tower (what's left of it) is just outside your current ham shack building! The tower and antenna were pictured in an article I published in Electrical Engineering, in Jan 1962, "High-frequency extraterrestrial noise investigations."   I used some leftover LPA antennas and made a two unit LPA (good for 20-200MHz), for a 25-35MHz sweep frequency receiver to film solar noise.  The tower was motorized in azimuth and I used rope and pulley to adjust elevation. I added  a 4 inch pipe 20 feet long to the height to make a 60 foot high antenna mast. The  mast was about 10 inches in diameter at the base. I put 1/2 inch plated bolts in the side to use as climbing steps. Mlodnosky had used the site in the early '50s for his PhD thesis on meteor scatter and had a bunch of 2 or 6 meter yagis on the tower.  (He died at a very young age, in his '30s). I had started my solar site at Bracewell's "Heliopolis" 10cm dish array down off Alpine Road and Villard gave me two 50 foot towers and a whole bunch of wire. I was going to make a large corner reflector antenna for solar radio measurements, but the dairy cows wandering around in the field always walked into my ground plane and tore up the copper wire, so Von Eshleman said he had two large LPAs left over from the 50-LPA  solar radar equipment and that I could use them; and use Mlodnosky's old site and trailer.

I would urge somebody to go over to Green library. Go up in reading room and on the shelves is a nearly complete run of Quad yearbooks. I know the W6YX club often had a photo in the Quad. I'm in one photo, c.1957, with Philip Fialer ('60, PhD EE '70), at least one Fenwick brother, Prof. Villard and several others. They also have the Quads in reserve in Green Special Collections, but they're much easier to get in the main reading room. You could get copies made from the Quad pages, they'd probably not look too bad in reproduction. I imagine you can then locate a number of guys names and photos who were active in W6YX. I'd look at the Quads starting in the late 1920's and go forward. Its easy to find the section of the Quad which lists clubs/hobby organizations. The people in photos are usually named. The photo I remember is 6 or 8 of us standing outside the ham shack. Villard had brought hamburgers and we had a meeting, photo session, and cookout. Also, the first beer I drank at Stanford was at W6YX. A bunch of frosh buddies from Wilbur Hall (6 of use in the car) got a sixpack or two and wondered where to drink it. I figured we could park out at W6YX, since there would be nobody there and we could see for a half mile in all directions. Plus, I could just say I was showing the W6YX rig to my buddies. Pretty innocent stuff!

I don't think I was ever in the 1975 directory of ex-W6YXers. My first call 1953 was WN0ODE; then within 6 months, W0ODE. I kept that call until ~1973? or 1975 when I became W1FEL. Then I took the Extra Class and became W1FK in 1977. During 1960-62 I occasionally operated as guest from Soviet Antarctic station as UA1KAE. I'm not too active now; but in the early days in 1950s I mostly operated 40-20 meter AM. In the 1970s-80s I operated a little SSB but mostly CW from 160-80-40- and mostly 20m,usually QRP. I had a wire antenna farm on my 13 acres. An 1100 foot beverage for 160m. and a 700-foot Vee with 3 switchable legs, 70 feet in air at feed point and strung through my fields and woods to about 35 feet high at ends. I converted a CB set to 6 meter FM and had it in my car during the late 70s.  I also made wire beams collinear for 20 and 15m out of twinlead, plus I had an old beat up supposedly multiband vertical. A hurricane in late 1980s plus my wife's deciding to cement up the wall openings from my basement to my antennas cut down.