Yardling Radio Ham Operates Own Station in Weld, and Plans to Use It in Case of Emergency

"Calling CQ...calling CQ...CQ" can be heard nightly rolling down the dim staircase from the heights of Weld Hall. Not the police, not Admiral Byrd, but John McG. Cochrane '43, the only undergraduate who runs and operates his own transmitting station here at Harvard.

Cochrane is a local boy, and hails from Brookline. He became interested in radio at the age of fourteen while he was at Brookline High School, and received his license from the Federal Bureau of Communications before his fifteenth birthday. He must be able to send and receive 13 words per minute on the Morse key, know every detail of the construction of his apparatus, and besides that be absolutely up-to-date on the latest radio legislation. There are many rules that have been established for the control of the various short wave bands and unless a "ham" is careful he runs a good chance of losing his permit to operate.

Set Bought for $75

He bought his receiving set, a Defiant 9-tube super-heterodyne job built for service and not for looks, for $75; but his transmitter he built himself at a very moderate cost, and runs it on the A.C. current conveniently provided by the University. His monthly electricity bill for running the whole radio station amounts to ten cents.

WIJU is not yet a very strong sender, but Cochrane, who will major in Electrical Engineering, intends to build it up into a mighty power unit after mid-years "if all goes well."

"The main advantage of the set as I have it now," he shouted over the rumblings emerging from the knob-covered instruments that litter his desk, "is that it's transportable. I can run downstairs and pack the whole thing in my car, hitch it up to a storage battery, and serve as a highly efficient motorized radio emergency patrol.