Tonight's meeting

[Rod Johnson]

It was a bit strange to talk to a high school teacher, who taught in the same building while I was there.

  Norm Bottenberg was a mechanical drawing instructor and meal shop teacher at Lake Washington High School when I was a student there in the early 1960's.

  I spent a lot of time in the other half of that building, in the electronics lab area. My novice call was KN7VRR in 1963.

 We had a ham radio club and a station there. It consisted of a Harvey-Wells 'Bandmaster'  transmitter (about 75 watts as I recall), and a National NC-183D receiver.  Both were good quality equipment in those days.  That gear was loaned to the school as part of the Civil Defense program.  We had a wire dipole in the ceiling of the 3 story wooden shop building which was a smaller version of an airplane hanger.

  The ham club members sold coffee and donuts to the adult students of the evening  "Adult Education'' classes.

  With the proceeds,  we were able to purchase a Heathkit DX-100 transmitter, a short tower, a rotator,  and a Hy-Gain 2 element 40M beam.  ( A 2 element 40M beam is still a large antenna, but in those days, it was quite unusual to see any antenna on a school, much less a beam with a huge wingspan.)   All that was installed on the shop roof, by the LW school district maintenance folks.

  We had a very good signal on 40M, for basically a novice class station.

  Rod J