W1BU 1961 Medfield, Massachusetts

Operator: F. Sam Harris

Francis "Sam" Harris W8UKS, W1FZJ, W1BU, KP4DJN - Engineering, record setter, editor and EME great. Many motored up to the wilds of Boston to visit Sam W1FZJ. His place up a winding dirt road was a good distance from civilization. Sam was the king of Rhododendron Swamp VHF Society. It was located at Sams nearby Medford, MA QTH. The title was named after a conservation preserve. It is very difficult to tell the Sam Harris story along with his wife W1HOY and to understand their impact on this world unless you knew them and saw them work on a favorite project. The classic art of the World Above 50 MHZ was their bag. From the start in Burton and Lorain, Ohio with big antennas on the VHF scene in the 1940's to the first amateur lunar tests, the couple were tops in their class of the EME sport. It was no accident Sam was picked in the the hemispherical antenna operations at Arecibo P.R.
Sam became a SK in 1978.

Sam's wife Helen was W1HOY!

Here is Sam with an electric beard trimmer!

In addition to trimming Sam Harris' beard:
A signal bounced off the moon was used to trip these scissors and cut the tape opening the Hudson Amateur Radio Council's convention in New York City (1960?).
The moon bounce signal, to accomplish this "trick", was transmitted to and  received from the moon at Sam's Medfield Massachusetts QTH, under control, at the time, by Fred Collins, W1FRR. The demodulated tone from the received moon signal was transmitted on HF to the Lafayette Radio KT-200 receiver, shown in the picture.  A circuit, triggered by the received tone, generated the voltage necessary to operate the solenoid and then close the scissors. The microphone shown next to the speaker, sent the audio from the receiver to the PA system, for those attending to hear. W4WJ

Here is another on the moonbounce that they did in 1964. The big EME event from Arecibo in 1964 use the call KP4BPZ, which was the call of the Director at the time, Gordon Pettengill. One story that Sam told me was one of the fantastic things I heard that just showed how smart Sam was when it came to RF and electronics. He asked me "how would you record the whole event?" I said in 1964 one would just hook up a reel to reel audio tape recorder to the audio output of the receiver. That made sense to me. This was not good enough for Sam. He used a video tape recorder with the big wide tape and recorded the IF out of the receiver. Then, if he wanted to listen again, he simply put this back into a receiver and could tune around and find new stations that he did not hear during the event. This was really ingenious and this just showed how Sam thought about everything that he did. Those tapes are probably long gone but it would sure be neat to find them and play those signals again. Today, we can do this much easier recording the I and Q channels from an SDR and always go back and find signals. Sam was really far ahead of his time in his thinking of how to do things. WA3FET

This was Sam Harris' favorite saying...  Paraphrasing...
"If your antenna did not come down during the winter storms, it is not big enough."

QSL Courtesy of K3LR
1st Name courtesy of W5KNE
Photo courtesy of W8SU
Info courtesy of W8SU, WA3FET
EME info & favorite saying courtesy of W4WJ