College Ham Club ‘found’ During Renovation

Like hieroglyphics on a wall, these etchings tell a story - but this tale dates back to some not-so-ancient times: The wall etchings are callsigns of students who belonged to the campus amateur radio society at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, a club founded a century ago. Some remnants left by members of the now-defunct club were discovered on the walls of a fifth-floor room in a building undergoing renovation. The room was apparently used for storage; the shack, which had been in a number of campus locations, eventually was moved to the building's basement.

Following the discovery of the callsigns, the university contacted graduates of the college, including Daryl George, whose callsign as a student was WA3EMX, and Neil Wells, whose callsign is still K1UTV. Both are 1969 graduates and shared their memories in an article on the campus website. Both of their callsigns appear etched on the building's wall.

The club had a callsign: W3AEQ. Gary Wilson, K2GW, continues to renew it, a gesture of optimism that ham radio will be back on the air one day on campus in much the same way it first arrived through the efforts of students in electrical engineering and physics.

For now, the Lehigh University Amateur Radio Society exists only in the memories and the hopes of some of the school's graduates. It exists too in those FCC-issued letters and numbers firmly carved into the wall of a campus building so many decades ago.