To begin this review of our radio event, you should know some details of Loretta Ensor, W9UA, and the years she and her brother Marshall worked together in efforts to aid the field of Amateur Radio they loved so much.
Loretta admired her brother for his ability in all things mechanical, electrical, and several other fields of interest. She watched with interest as a pre-teen while 12 year old Marshall built crystal sets to hear the early radio station signals on headphones around 1912, and even talked to other boys in 1916 using his first transmitting station, a "Spark Gap" 2-way radio. He had much more interest in being in the workshop making things than being involved in farming and the dairy herd operations. Loretta, on the other hand was a dairy farm girl and was dedicated to it her whole life.
1922 gave the opportunity to become federally licensed in the field of amateur radio, and Marshall was quick to pass his test becoming 9BSP. He was already building advanced tube type radios and had his license posted above the modified secretary desk sitting in the farm kitchen. Becoming licensed like her brother, seemed interesting to Loretta, and when Marshall suggested she could help him eventually teach his students get licensed by putting a radio station in the school shop area, that gave the practical reason for her to also get her ticket.
The year was 1923, her senior year. Loretta was a 17-year-old student at the Olathe High School where her 21-year-old brother was in his 4th year of 46 years as instructor of Industrial Arts. She was growing up on the family dairy farm just 6 miles South of Olathe. Loretta studied for and passed the difficult First Class Radio Telephone test, becoming 9UA.
After licensing, Loretta shared the farm kitchen radio set and enjoyed being able to contact stations near by and far away. In 1926, Loretta even distinguished herself by being the first American woman to contact a station across the Pacific Ocean in a two-way with a New Zealand ham operator.
Loretta was active in amateur radio, making casual contacts with local friends and also becoming a 1936 charter member of the Young Ladies Relay League, a service organization dedicated to handling goodwill messages from coast to coast in the 1930s. She made many close friends who she had regular contacts with over many years.
During the decade of the 1930s Loretta gave much assistance to the ongoing "Teaching Radio by Radio" work done by brother Marshall. Of major importance was the need to daily charge the bank of battery cells in the basement that allowed nightly operation of W9BSP code and theory lessons before commercial electricity appeared in 1935. In case of a necessary absence of instructor Marshall, Loretta was quite able to fill in for the nightly code instruction.
It was 1934 when Marshall put the W9UA rig and associated equipment into the Olathe High School for use in training some students to acquire their license. (A first in Kansas). The radio helped provide numerous kids with their licenses, and even afterwards, they were able to get various help and assistance from Mr. Ensor. When the Second World War started, The W9UA rig went into storage upstairs in the farm Peg Barn where it stayed as part of the Ensor Museum until 2004 when the Marshall Ensor Memorial Organization elected to rehab the old timer for operation in the radio room in the farm house. Past Ensor student, Harry Krout, WØYQG, did the fine work with care and without visual change. Harry even designed and built the needed power supply as the original one was missing.
After Marshall’s 1970 death, Loretta continued using the famous hand built kilowatt rig for her contacts with friends. In 1972 she had been active 50 years and decided to not renew her W9UA license. Loretta died in 1991 at the age of 87. Her W9UA and Marshall’s W9BSP calls went back to the FCC pool. The MEMO Club officers worked to re-acquire both calls and return then to the farm location where they had used and enjoyed over a long number of memorable years. Each was returned to the airways as special event stations.
2006 SPECIAL EVENT
Our MEMO Special Event, putting the W9UA rig and call on the air from the Ensor Museum radio room has been looked forward to for a long time. The transmitter had been in the restore mode for about a year, and in the Spring of 2006 we lucked out getting position of the call which we were monitoring for a long time and when it became overdue for renewal, we suspected it could really be ours to acquire. It turned out to belong to a deceased Illinois ham since 1998 but somehow the FCC did not find out about it. Our Trustee, WAØGWA pursued getting the necessary info to the FCC and it became available to us.
The location of the Ensor Museum is nicely situated within ¼ mile from the high point of Bonita, the geographical highest point in Eastern Kansas. Our 160-meter full wave antenna is one we installed over 3 years ago. It is fed with open feed line to the 85 foot level of the 100 foot tower next to the East side of the ornate 1891 2 store farm home, in an Inverted Vee to trees North and South. It works well on all HF bands except 160 where the QRN from county power lines kills us most evenings. We thought by feeding both leads against ground, we may have a better chance of DX but the noise still covered up most all signals below the S-7 power line noise. We hope to replace it with a better antenna soon.
It became clear that working stations beyond local ground wave was not going to help us fill the logbook. As the evenings wore on into 9 to 10 PM local, we did seem to have ears for stations to the East perhaps 500 miles, but our weak AM modulation didn’t help much when we were only throwing out 10-12 watts.
The rig was never intended to be a giant killer. More like a weak minnow in the big fish bowl. The rig was built by Mr. Ensor for the purpose of teaching 1930s students about the operating methods and rules of ham radio. This beautiful hand built rig is really a large QRP rig, under modulated at about a 60% level. If we tune it somewhere near the 15-18 watt max, the modulation gets worse.
The kudos go to Tom, WBØZNY, a local fellow who made the first AM call to W9UA. After making a few contacts on AM, we decided to go to CW and that got our signal out lots better. During the first evening a CW contact was had with John, WØRQ in Lincoln, KS. about the center of the state. It was the best DX for the Friday evening operation.
We suffered our first equipment problem when the AGC switch on the SX-122 went intermittent effectively killing all reception sometimes. We were in the old mode of operation that not all hams have experience with, where you silence the receiver by throwing the transmit switch on the rig. This was something we all had to get used to. When working CW, the need to use the receiver for CW monitoring gave additional problems due to having to reduce RF Gain and volume during each transmission. We did not make one of those neat controls for that purpose before hand. Our maiden voyage was sort of a circus.
The next evening we replaced the receiver with another brought in by our VP Joe, KCØTBB. By this time after shuffling things around and making things work best way possible, the shack somewhat lost the layout beauty in favor to making it operate. Our first contact was also our best DX of the event. At the time, our volunteer operator was Don, WØDEW. By co-coordinating things by telephone, Gary, W5GW, was able to tune to our signal and we his. The following contact was a charming event for both Gary and us. Gary lives in Buda TX. and is originally from Olathe where as a youngster about 1959, got his license with the Elmering of Harry Krout, WØYQG. Both of these gentlemen are MEMO members now.
Speaking of member volunteer operators and assistants, the following is a list of those present at W9BSP - W9UA:
Ron, KBØDTI - Floyd, W4RW - Harry, WØYQG - Joe, KCØTBB - Wilbur, WØDEL - Joe, WØJSG - Dan, NØZIZ - Joe, WKØG - Brian, KCØBS - Sheldon, KCØCW - Don, WØDEW - Ed, KSØRF -Tim, NØSZE - Larry, KCØSKX - Rich, NØENO - Jason, KCØNBG .
Stations worked in order:
Tom, WBØZNY - Terry, WAØDTH - George, KØGY - George, WBØCNK - Kyle, KØKN - Frank, WØBE - Dan, NØZIZ - Harry, WØYQG - Bob, KØZDQ - John, WØRQ - Jon, KØZN - Gary, W5GW - Jerry, WØCLR - Rich, NØENO - Jason, KCØNBG - Gary, WØTM - Ron, KBØDTI - Larry, NØMTC - Brian, KCØBS .
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"Time has a way of diminishing the echoes of people and events. As eyewitnesses vanish into history, Milestones blur and become abstract. We struggle to keep the memories alive through repetition. Stories are told and retold. Events are re-enacted. We do this not only to honor the past, but also to retrace our footsteps so that we can understand how we came to be where we are."
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WØYQG making final adjustments
W9UA Transmitter
WØYQG switching - WØHXS tuning
A view through the door
Clockwise from bottom- W4RW, WØDEL, WØJSG, WØYQG, WØHXS, KCØTBB
NØENO, KCØTBB & NØSZE
KCØCW
WØDEW
The small radio room of the Ensor Museum at Olathe, KS. MEMO Club operated.
KC0CW
WK0G
N0SZE
N0ENO at the key
W0DEW uses the Wolf Hong to weight down the hot key
Club Pres. W0HXS uses one gloved hand on the hot key
L-R W0HXS, W0YQG, W0DEL, KB0DTI, KC0TBB, W4RW, KS0RF. A gallery of some MEMO club members present at the W9UA special event