Society of Wireless Pioneers

CLICK HERE FOR ARCHIVES OF SOWP JOURNALS

Here are CW net times/frequencies on the web for benefit of CHRS members who enjoy CW.     Code speed on all of these nets will be adjusted to accommodate the slowest speed station.
Thursdays

• 8 AM PST – 14055 kHz – (CHRS/SOWP) W0AP memorial Transcon net. NCS N6SL
• 7 PM PST – 7052 KhZ – (CHRS/SOWP) RJ net, NCS  N6SL

National QCWA CW net on Wednesdays at 5 PM PST on 7035 kHz (Little early for E-W propagation)
Sundays

• 7 AM PST – 14055 kHz – (Intercontinental sideswiper net) NCS K3CKT
• 8 AM PST – 21055 kHz – (sideswiper net) NCS CN8YR

Note: The sideswiper nets will bring back very old memories of Maritime CW.  You will hear variations on “Lake Erie Swing” and/or “Banana Boat Roll” This type of sending was common during periods of heavy static (QRN) in the Gulf of Mexico/Caribbean Sea and Great Lakes. 73 to all
Ben, N6SL  former last president of the SOWP
In honor of the Society of Wireless Pioneers, a program of CHRS. Kathleen Parker of San Rafael, California at 15 years old in 1916, an amateur wireless operator (call sign 6SO) also holding a Commercial First Class license. From the cover, Electrical Experimenter, Oct. 1916 and page 396.

Waldo T. Boyd is now a Silent Key, at age 94. He preserved the Society of Wireless Pioneers (of which he was one) and enabled its merger into the California Historical Radio Society (CHRS). One old Pioneer wrote of him: “Walt was the rock that kept the SoWP afloat for many years” (mixing marine metaphors). Waldo started out as a radioman in the Navy in 1932, and actually worked a spark circuit among the “TinCans” in his squadron. He later served in radio intelligence on General MacArthur’s staff in Australia. He enjoyed a career in the military-industrial complex, but then devoted himself to advancing his religion, the Bahai World Faith. He inherited management of the Society of Wireless Pioneers from its founder, Bill Brenimen, and kept it active as long as members could come to meetings. He also fostered the several SoWP amateur radio Morse code nets still in operation. This year CHRS honored him with the 2012 Doc Herrold award for his work in preserving and documenting radio history. He and his daughter Sandy came to the July Radio -by -the -Bay celebration at KRE to receive this award. For this recognition he was grateful on behalf of the Wireless Pioneers he served so long, and whose history he had dedicated himself to preserving. He died of old age, by way of a stroke and quickly, but he was of good cheer to the end. A video interview done at KRE memorializes some of his contributions to the radio art and its history. 73 de Bart Lee, K6VK ##

The California Historical Radio Society is pleased to honor the The Society of Wireless Pioneers in this merger. The Society of Wireless Pioneers is a unique and outstanding society of professionals and amateurs nearly all of whom have a common bond of having mastered the art of radio communicating over world-distances via ‘Morse Code’ with hand key or ‘bug.’ As that Society has so rightly said:

“Many of us have had the weight of responsibility for safety of life directly upon our shoulders. We traveled and were paid for it. At the core of everything we did was our ability to hear through atmospheric noise and make sense of ‘dits’ and ‘dahs,’ voiced code-words, and even at times to ‘make sense’ out of unusual silences. And in our amateur radio operating today the thrill is still present, we have a language that relatively few members of the world’s population even remotely comprehends.

The art and science of wireless communicating is changing more and more rapidly as each year comes into focus and disappears over the horizon. But in spite of the adoption of geo-positioning satellites, burst transmissions at thousands of characters per second, and spread-spectrum techniques for making our communications confidential, CW is an art that we hope will be with us for centuries to come. It is done with the minds and muscles of man, the only artifacts being the key and the ear and their meld with the mind.

SOWP is dedicated to the preservation of both the history and the art of CW radio communication, and of its offshoots. We collect and preserve the history of each advance in the art, but our hearts remain with Morse, and we are content to know that one day some one’s life may be in our hands and only our knowledge of Morse Code will bring help to preserve that life.”

Click here for an archive of old SoWP Journals in PDF format

Other Silent Keys:
Robert Shrader – On April 11, 2012 our long time member Robert Shrader W6BNB passed away.  Bob was nearly 99 years old and started in radio as a Radio Officer on Dollar Line ships making round the World voyages. During WW2 he was an instructor at the Kings Point Merchant Marine Academy. After the war he was with the Alameda Sheriff’s department and began authoring a classic book “Electronic Communications” which was used by nearly all after the war to get FCC licenses. Bob founded the Sideswiper Net (SSN) and the SOWP Richard Johnstone (RJ) Thursday night Pacific coast CW radio net. He will be missed by all who have been participating in these various nets.
73, Ben Russell, SOWP President