For information contact: Robert Lamar
Editors: Station photo available if not enclosed.
For Immediate Release
Stanford -- W6YX, the pioneer "ham radio" station of the Stanford Amateur Radio Club, is celebrating its 50th birthday this year.
Early records of the club are missing, but Secretary-Treasurer Terry Elass and the 20 other present club members put its beginnings somewhere around 1924-25. All members are students, both graduate and undergraduate, including one "XYL" (female).
To celebrate W6YX's anniversary, Elass, club president George Flammer III, and club Trustee O.G. (Mike) Villard Jr., professor of electrical engineering, decided to try contacting as many as possible of the estimated 200 club alumni.
They got replies from 80, including another XYL, the majority of whom are still active radio amateurs. The result is a "Cumulative Membership Directory" put out by the club with loose leaves for additions they hope to obtain.
The directory also reveals that over two-thirds of the respondents are engineers, scientists, or researchers, according to one alumnus' count. About a third are in non-engineering careers, and over 10% are top corporate executives.
The directory is dedicated to Stanford Provost and Vice-President Emeritus Frederick E. Terman "without [whose] unfailing support and encouragement the club might easily have disappeared." Terman was never a club member, since it was founded after he graduated, but he obtained his amateur radio license in 1916.
W6YX has been located in various campus sites, including what is now the Frenchman's Hill residential area from which it moved several years ago into its present surplus trailer off Searsville Road. The 1,000-watt transmitter operates on five high-frequency amateur bands, and has "phone patch" capability and RTTY (radio teletype) equipment.
Membership is open to any Stanford student, faculty, or staff member with a ham license. Most members use the equipment afternoons, evenings, and weekends, says Elass. A calendar is kept of the scheduled users, who take turns.
Becoming a licensed ham is not difficult, according to Elass-- "You just have to pass an exam given by the FCC [Federal Communications Commission]." Club members don't have time to give formal instruction, he said, but the Foothill College Electronics Museum's amateur radio club is currently giving a class in it. The Palo Alto club indicated it also might give a class if enough people are interested.
November 19, 1975 cr