E-mails, between Bob Leskovec and Bill Anzick . . .

From Anzick 2007 Jul 25:

I just got your letter today about the Radio Club and plans for a reunion.  What is really interesting is that I also realized that it was the 50th year since Sputnik and I was involved in the recording project and was interested in getting copies of old archive news reports, so I wrote to the librarian listed for the Cleveland Plain Dealer to see how to get at the archives, since their web site had no access.  However, I got no response.  Now I get your letter!

Briefly, I no longer have a license or call sign (W8SUI) for the same reason W8KTZ was lost.  During college and graduate school I lost track of when to renew and lost both my amateur license, and also my First Class Radiotelephone certificate.

I will have to go up into the attic to see what other memorabilia I may have.  I was into photography back then and will have to look through my negatives to see what I have.  I just recently found all the pictures I took of Ohio State's Van De Graaff accelerator lab's conversion from a home brew 2MV accelerator to a commercial 5MV accelerator.  I got my MS in nuclear physics from OSU.

I have attached a copy of an article from the General Electric News about the SJ radio club which you might find interesting.

From Leskovec 2007 Jul 25:

It's so good to hear from you!  The Sept 29th, 2007 re-union idea is to celebrate our 50 years of tracking Sputnik back on October 4th, 1957, and to get some coverage on the local media, --mostly to try and find more people in the old SJHRC, so we should be better able to get our act together for a bigger re-union in 2008.  Your old buddy Van Blargan is working with us and we are trying to find (William) Tom Hipp.

I can't recall particulars, but I remember I somehow found you once before years ago, and talked with you. I think your were working for IBM.

If you recall, I got the pieces of your 80m vertical tower that fell, and later made a 40m vertical in Willowick.  My first job while still at SJ with the Commercial Radiotelephone License was working at Lost Nation airport, and some years later, I sold the tower to my boss there, Ed Vilagi W8BBA.

From Anzick 2007 Jul 26:

I found a box of old photos and clippings in the attic this morning and wanted to pass along ones I think you might be interested in.  One is another GE newspaper with reference to Sputnik, and the other is a newspaper clipping about trip to Buffalo.  The ones I have attached are the low resolution version so they will not take so long to send.

There are two photos of an NMR detector which I built.  When I was a senior at JCU, everyone was taking comprehensive exams rather then doing any theses, but I had a professor who had plans for an NMR detector which he wanted built.  Seems he had assigned it to others in previous years, but they could not get it to work.  Since I was in Ham Radio, he gave me the chance.  It took me a while to find a transistor that would work at a high enough frequency, but I finally got it to work.

From Leskovec 2007 Jul 27:

Who was doing NMR at JCU before I got there?  As a senior, I built a 1,000-volt microsecond pulser to key WWII radio transmitters we used for ultrasonics work.  It was the beginning of a system I finished building over the next two years, measuring the "Ultrasonic Attenuation of Molten Sulphur" from 30-430 MHz for my MS in Physics there.

That looks like Van Blargan pointing the metal shears at someone in the basement "lab" pictures!

From Anzick 2007 Jul 27:

Yes, I also recognized Van Blargan in the picture.  For some reason, he is the only one I can distinctly remember from back then.

You know, I cannot even remember who at JCU I did my thesis for.  I have a copy of it and there is no faculty name on it.  The title is "A Transistorized Detector for Nuclear Magnetic Resonance".
The object was to build a small two-transistor detector which would detect proton resonance in water. In those days, transistors were only in discrete packages and highly unreliable.  The circuit diagram I was given did not function at all and I had to not only change the transistors, but also the circuitry, but eventually got an absorption signal of well over 100 millivolts.  I don't remember why the professor wanted it, but it sure beat taking comprehensive exams!