Kitterer, Nevin (Kit)

W6AUF/N0AUF

W6YDK W4NTR W6IAB

Kit Kitterer sent this to me in July of 2001. Kit, as you can see, was one of the pioneers of early amateur radio in the Corps. Not long after this missive Kit began his final battle. Here's his story.

Subject: USMC Radio Stations

Dan, I can give you all the information about Marine Corps Amateur Radio stations.

It basically started out in MCRD San Diego and Camp Pendleton. Two guys from the communications school in each base started it up, in MCRD it was in an empty room in the barracks that was used for instruction of radio operators, a couple of them happened to be ham radio operators.

At MCRD, the first radios where the BC610's if you are old enough to remember it, it was used in the comm trucks as portable communications and pulled a trailer with a generator to power it with and that was the primary means of communications.

After WW2 they started amateurs radio stations, the first was in Camp Pendleton out in DeLuz canyon in a home made shack built with scrap lumber that could be scrounged up, their primary communications was with the BC610's and Collins 51J receiver at that time all communications were on AM and some RTTY but most traffic was AM, some CW for the good operators which they had a bunch of being at the Comm school.

The man who started out in MCRD was an old time ham and later died, I wish I could remember their names but at my age (81) I kind of forget names.

I was stationed at HQMC in Washington DC and was involved with W4NTR in Henderson Barracks there was a station in Camp Lejeune but the call leaves me at this time (*W4LEV) and then W6IAB at Camp Pendleton and W6YDK at MCRD, in Hawaii there was KH6AJF that was operated by an old time ham who got out of the Corps when his enlistment was up.

I first got involved in W6YDK while I was station with the 1st Tank Battalion Reserve as the inspector-instructors staff which was right across the street from the station and I would go over there at noon time and operate the station. We finally got a permanent operator through a Major who was OIC of the school and also a ham but inactive for years but with that station and my helping him he got active and remained active to just about the time he died.

I was transferred to Okinawa and went into my field which was a Supply Chief and I worked a ham many times over there who was a Captain. He pulled some strings and got me permanently attach to the station and that was my primary duties, we ran phone patches most of the time with a lot of written traffic on CW and RTTY. We had a Collins KWS1 and 75A4 receiver with a huge rhombic antenna beamed on the west coast, I was running traffic to the states when all other stations on the island where dead, the Air Force used to call me and asked who I was talking to and I would tell him and he said he couldn't hear a thing coming in from the states.

We started our schedules with stations on the east coast for phone patch traffic and work our selves back to the west coast as the day went on, it was quite late in Okinawa but we didn't care we had a room full of people who wanted to make a call.

That was a good tour of duty and then I was transferred to Camp Pendleton and ended up with W6IAB, I didn't do any MARS at that time as I wanted the hams in the states to get the traffic count, IAB was always on top of the BPL list for military traffic, he had a count as high as 5000 per month.

So that was where I ended my career in the Marine Corps, I retired from there and went into sales, I started out in a radio store in San Diego call Western Radio and started selling Collins radio like they where going out of style and the next thing you know I had an offer for a job with Collins as a Sales Engineer for the 11 western states, very nice job but I could see the writing on the wall that Collins was getting out of the ham radio business and I quit and went to work for another electronics company in the bay area and then got an offer from HyGain electronics and went to work for them and later moved back to Lincoln, Nebraska and retired from them when I got to the age to draw social security. I moved back to San Diego and bought this place in Escondido which was a small town at that time but not now.

My ham activities where pretty good, I have a 52 foot tower with a tri-band antenna and have three HF radios with the ICOM 737A and a Dentron MLA2500 which is good for a couple of kW's out, I didn't go into traffic, I had my belly full of it and besides most of it was going on MARS and I had a MARS license but never used it …..

Dan, this has turned out to be a long letter and had no intentions of writing this much.

Best 73

Kit W6AUF