Sometime during the year
1946 he applied for a Ham Licence and was given the callsign VS2BS. As a matter
of interest he had to pass his morse test before he was given the licence. At
that time there were no such modes as SSB, Amtor, Packet Radio or FM. Only AM
(Ancient Modulation hi hi) was used.
Luckily for him that the RAAF (Royal Australian Air Force) Butterworth sold out a lot of damaged transmitters and test equipment by
tender. Of course all these went to the secondhand dealers. He could get a lot
of parts from them without any trouble. Transmitter parts such as coils,
condensers, HT Transformers etc. could be got for a song.
With the parts from the junk
shops he built his first AM transmitter. For the finals he used 813 tetrode
valves running at 1500 volts and plate current of 300 ma DC. That was his first
AM transmitter and he got a lot of fun
with it. For antenna he used the windom aerial slung between two coconut trees
and whenever there was a strong wind he kept his fingers crossed hopping that the coconut trees would not
swing apart too much. Later he used counter weights and pulleys to overcome
this problem.
During that time a few
British Officers, who were interested in ham radio, were seconded to the local
government sevices. Among them were Charles E. Salton VS2DV, Stewart Faulkner
VS2B AND James C. Pershouse VS2DQ.
One day VS2DV, VS2DB, VS2DQ
and himself (VS2BS) met in VS2DV’s QTH and decided to start some sort of Ham
club running on the same line as RSGB. He don’t have actual date the club was
started, it was some where in 1952.
Charles VS2DV and Faulkner
VS2DB left for England after their term of service. James VS2DQ stayed back in
Malaya. James and VS2BS they tried to run the club as best as they could.
That was the whole story. He
do hope this will give the new Hams some idea of how MARTS was started.
After our independent in
1957 their callsigns was changed from
VS2 TO 9M2.
He continue to operate his
station under the callsign of 9M2BS. In fact he was a rare station at that
time. Later more hams got their licences. As a matter of interest 9M2DW a SWL
at that time and a few others used to visit his station just for eyeball QSOs
and also to see how the station worked. This is how MARTS was started and his contribution
to the societies.
Though 9M2BS has left us,
his name is still alive. You go to electronic shops and supermarket and look
for EKK transfomers. EKK stands for Ewe Kuan Kew. He was well known 9M2BS the
co-founder of MARTS. The son and the grandsons carry on with the good name of
those good old hams.
Referance: Marts Newsletter Dec 1988, 9M2AR, 9M2RI and 9M2RS
No comments:
Post a Comment