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The Ham Radio Station
at LeConte Lodge

When I worked at the Lodge -- summers of 1962 and 1963 -- the Lodge was owned by Herrick and Myrtle Brown.  The Browns had purchased the Lodge from Jack Huff, long-time owner and operator who bought the Lodge from the original owner, Paul Adams.

When I was an 8th grade student at Park Junior High School, Knoxville, TN, my science teacher was Mr. James Grant.  He was (still is) an amateur radio operator -- a ham operator -- call sign W4UVU.  He set up a small ham radio station in the science class closet and I was hooked on amateur radio.  I got my first license in 1958 thanks to Mr. Grant

One of the most active and well-known ham operators in the Knoxville area was Herrick Brown -- whom everyone called "Brownie," amateur radio callsign W4ZZ.  I met Brownie through the SMH Club and talked with him often on the radio.

Brownie had a small amateur radio station set up at the Lodge complete with a LONG wire antenna that ran down the mountain for a couple of hundred feet.   This antenna was for the HF amateur radio bands -- 3.5, 7.0, and 14.0 MHz.  We also had a VHF station that operated on the 2-meter -- 144 MHz -- amateur band.  There was a one-room cabin where four of us staff members slept in double bunk beds -- two up, two down.  Brownie installed the ham radio equipment in this cabin and erected a mast next to the cabin for the VHF antenna.  For some reason lost in history, rooms on board ship that housed the radio equipment were known as "the radio shack."  Ham radio operators adopted this practice and an amateur radio operator's station is known today as a "shack."  The cabin where we slept and where Brownie has his ham station was called "the shack" -- I believe it's still called that today (January 2010).

Brownie had his ham station on LeConte before the day of miniature solid-state equipment that uses very little power and before the day of solar or wind generators.  The equipment we had was older equipment that used tubes and required 120 volts AC.  There's no electricity on LeConte except what we made ourselves.  We could operate the amateur radio station only by running the old Onan generator -- which required gasoline -- which had to be hauled up the mountain on horseback.  As a result, we rarely fired up the amateur radio station.  We ran the generator once a week on washday to run the old wringer washing machine that we used to wash our clothes and Brownie and I often got on the ham radio station then.  Sometimes we would fire it up on Sunday afternoons or during ham radio contests.

Brownie had a lot of old WW II surplus radio equipment -- old WW II military radio gear was still widely available into the early 1960's.  One of the radios Brownie had was a low-powered transmitter-receiver that was powered by a hand-cranked generator.  The generator was about the size of a football.  Part of the radio set was the generator and its mount -- there was a bicycle-type seat with three legs.  The generator was mounted in front of the seat and had handles sticking out of it, just like the pedals on a bicycle.  The person who cranked the generator sat in the "bicycle seat" facing the generator and turned the handles by hand, generating enough electricity to operate the radio.  We took a photo of me cranking the generator that was published in a national amateur radio magazine.  I had a copy of the magazine for years and, if I ever find it, I'll copy that photo and post it here.  

Here's a photo of the outside of the shack with the VHF antenna on a wooden pole -- it looks like a long TV antenna.  In the distance is a view of the East Tennessee valley -- as I recall the mountain in the far distance to the right of the antenna mast is English Mountain.

Here's a photo of Ken Attenhoffer standing in the door of "the shack" (below).  Behind him are the double bunk beds where four of us crew members slept -- two up, two down.

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