[Headnote]
San Diego's W6YDK stayed on the air for three days during the search for
a group of hikers lost in Mexico.
Pictures Not Shown
Cpl.
R. A. Studer scaled W6YDK's unusual rotary antenna to make adjustments
for the station's range.
MSgt.
N. Kitterer, SSgt. F. Hill and Cpl. Studer help operate the ham radio
station at
San
Diego.
HIKING
AND HOLIDAYS are a double feature most youngsters can't resist. When two
cadets from a San Diego, Calif., military school went hiking on a "long
week end" with one of their instructors deep into Mexico, the outcome
was tense, somewhat doubtful, but never quite out-of-hand-thanks to the
Marines and the amateur radio facilities of W6YDK at the Marine Corps
Recruit Depot, San Diego.
The
trio of adventurers had left on Thursday for a camping trip in the wild
mountainous region more than 200 miles below the border. They were due
back on Saturday. When they failed to return by Sunday, a search was
begun. And in the drama of a search there is news. The
San
Diego
papers got hot on the story but communications in Mexico are not the
most efficient. In the area being fine-combed by the search parties,
news was nil. Reporters asked Wesley Lees, the communications officer of
San Diego’s Civil Defense organization, if there was any way of
establishing contact with the hunters.
Lees,
a retired Marine master sergeant, allowed there was one possibility -the
powerful ham radio station at the recruit depot. W6YDK, with its six
element rotary antenna-the only one of its type in
Southern California,
could reach deep into Mexico.
Tuesday, Corporal Ronald A. "Buck" Studer, of Erlanger, Ky., went on the
air. Two hours past
midnight,
first contact was made with
Mexico.
Buck shut down operations at 0800 on Friday morning. During that time he
never left the station. Technical Sergeant Donn O'Neil, of Seattle,
Wash., a student in the Communication-Electronics School Battalion's
radio technicians course, spelled Buck now and then as the story came in
to the Marine station from a ham operator who had gone south with the
search party. O'Neil has been a ham little more than a year and he has
his own station, K6SNI.
All
the news accounts of the search -conducted under the supervision of the
Mexican army through the coordination of the American Consul in
Tijuana-were taken from messages the Marines transcribed to a roll of
paper which, at times, stretched across the room. Food was brought in
for the hams, and according to Studer, the long watch was accomplished
with the aid of "much, much coffee."
One
newsman covering the rescue at the station reported, "Hour after hour,
the Marine hams hung in there, piecing the story together and somehow
making sense out of a broadcast that was barely intelligible to a
layman's ears."
Pictures not Shown
MSgt. Kitterer stood by as Cpl. Studer went on the air. Kitterer, of
the 1st Tank Battalion l-l staff, operates his own radio station
K6BVV.
TSgt. Donn O'Neil and Cpl. R. Studer worked on the equipment at W6YDK.
O'Neil is a radio student. Studer is the full-time operator.
Buck
belittled the hours he stuck by the set during the search. "After you
are a ham a while, you stay up all night hunting 'DX' in foreign
countries, just to see how far you can reach."
"DX"
is ham talk for distant stations.
First
good news came Wednesday night when one of the boys was discovered. The
second lad was found Thursday morning. Their leader was located Thursday
afternoon. The Marines stayed by their radio until 0800, Friday morning,
when the party crossed the border into
California,
and the ham buzzed the Marines.
When
the search was secured and the ordeal of survival ended, the campers
told how they had lost the trail and had decided to separate. The boys
were to stay put while the instructor set out across the desert for help
but they, too, were parted when one of them went for water and couldn't
get back up a steep cliff to rejoin his companion.
Not
all the "traffic" handled by W6YDK is as tense as the aforementioned
episode-which netted the two Marines a meritorious mast. Usually, it's a
message from a Marine wanting to talk to his wife or family on the ham's
"phone patch," a device which lets one of the parties talk over the air
from a telephone at the home. On other occasions, the hams copy the
messages and then deliver them by telephone.
There
is a sailor in Japan who keeps calling W6YDK for the latest baseball
scores-in season, and a Marine in Hawaii who left his suitcase at the
Marines' Memorial Club in San Francisco. he asked the San Diego hams to
pass the word. As long as it's unofficial business of a legitimate
nature, the station will cooperate. When a recruit depot Marine is up
for transfer, he often begins house-hunting at his forthcoming duty
station via ham.
While
Special Services sponsors the station, Colonel Albert J. Keller,
commanding officer of the Communication Electronics School Battalion, is
custodian of what is probably the latest and best-equipped amateur radio
setup in the Marine Corps. The custodian -a role assigned to the skipper
of the C & E Battalion since the station began operating at Camp Del Mar
in the post-war II days-does not necessarily have to be a licensed ham
although Col. Keller is-call letters, K6UEI. When C & E moved from Del
Mar to San Diego, W6YDK went with it.
Today
the station's equipment includes two Collins KW6I transmitters of 1000
watts each and a "home built" transmitter, plus two Collins 75A4
receivers. The latter items cost $2100 apiece but W6YDK personnel
broadcast on the theory, "If you can't hear 'em, you can't talk to 'em."
An automatic mike that stops sending when the operator stops talking and
cuts in the receiver, speeds the job of taking messages on a typewriter.
The depot's ham set is a member of MARS-the Military Amateur Radio
Service, organized by the Army.
Studer-the
San Diego station's only full-duty operator at present-tries for daily
contact with other Marine hams at Albany, Ga., Norfolk and Quantico,
Va., Camp Pendleton, Twentynine Palms and Barstow, Calif., and Camp
Smith and Kaneohe Bay, in Hawaii, but Buck and the other hams operating
from W6YDK feel that the Marine stations should be better organized.
"At
least to the point where they'll maintain their schedules," Captain
William R. Clifton, of
Wyandotte,
Mich.,
assistant director of the
Communication
Material School and officer-in-charge of the station, said. Capt.
Clifton has been hamming for 10 years; he has his own station
W8AUC-stashed in his auto. Master Sergeant Nevin R. Kitterer, of LaJolla,
Calif., supply chief on the Inspector Instructor staff of the 1st Tank
Battalion, USMCR, has two sets, one in his car and one at home, but both
answer to the same call letters-K6BVV.
Staff
Sergeant Fred T. Hill, of
Birmingham,
Ala.,
sometimes helps Studer with the traffic during the mornings. He teaches
aviation radio repair at C & E battalion in the afternoons. Like the
others, he has his own set-K6MIY.
"Amateur" is an unjust word when it is applied to hams. It takes plenty
of radio knowledge to pass a Federal Communications Commission test. All
hams-more than 100,000 of them in this country-must be licensed. While
the exam isn't a snap, hams usually have little trouble with it. They're
somewhat fanatical in their love for radio and retain an amazing
understanding of its theories and applications. It's a growing business,
too. The FCC receives more than 5000 applications for operator and
station licenses each month.
"And
the Marine Corps is always in need of ham operators," 19-year-old Studer
said. Buck is a good example of the feeling hams harbor for radio. He
claims he's "married" to the set because it never talks back unless he
flips the switch.
Kitterer and O'Neil are not as emphatic about hamming-they're both
married men. They do, however, eat their brown-bag lunches at the San
Diego ham station. Col. Keller used to do quite a bit of ham operating
over W6YDK a while back before his other duties began demanding more of
his time.
Hams
were busy during the Korean war, particularly when the Chinese
communists sprang the Chosin trap. Amateur radio stations throughout the
country worked overtime to pass along information about those men who
fought their way out of the trap. It is the same way whenever disaster
in the form of fire, flood or storm strikes somewhere in the
United
States.
Calls pour into ham stations from persons all over the country-many of
them servicemen-seeking word about the safety of relatives.
All
hams are subject to the Amateurs' Code. This "constitution" demands a
standard of conduct and service which raises the status of a ham station
from an expensive toy to a useful hobby. When disaster does strike an
area, radio becomes a life line to the community. Often, the amateur
station is the only link between a devastated district and the outside
world. The code also provides that the amateur will keep his station
abreast of science; his set must be well constructed and efficient. Hams
pledge never to use the air for their own amusement in any way which
might lessen the pleasure of others. They agree to uphold the promises
made to the public and the government by the American Radio Relay League
on behalf of ham operators. It's a strict set of rules, which is rarely
disregarded by hams who respect their interesting pastime. Despite its
heavy load of traffic, W6YDK has never been reprimanded by the FCC.
Buck
Studer figures W6YDK talks with at least 1000 hams a month in the course
of transmitting messages from eight-to-four each day and just plain "rag
chewing" in the evenings. It's a combination of duty and recreation he
enjoys, but once in a while it springs a surprise on him even though he
has held a license-W4TPA-for six years. Hams-by custom-identify
themselves to other hams by first names only. After he had spent half an
hour yakking with an operator named "Butch," Buck learned that Butch was
an Army general.