The Evolution of Boy Scout Headquarters Station K2BSA

It's very likely that you've either heard, or heard of K2BSA, the club
station at the National Headquarters of the Boy Scouts of America, located in
Dallas, Texas. Then it's also likely that you'd be interested in learning a
little background on how the station originated.
It is well known that in 1910, Britisher Lord Baden-Powell founded the Boy
Scout movement in England. The movement soon caught on in the US, with its
original Headquarters located at 2 Park Avenue, New York City until the early
1960's. After WW2, three top executives at Boy Scout Headquarters were radio
amateurs who desperately wanted to have a Boy Scout Headquarters'club station,
but there was no room in the crowded office complex for such a frill. These
amateurs were Lloyd Everhart, K2CVT, publisher of all Boy Scout publications,
the late Harry Harchar, W2GND, editor of Boys' Life, and E.E. 'Hoisy'
Hoisington, K2GDR (now W4YTA), Chairman of the Safety and Health Department.
Around 1960 these amateurs came upon some exciting news. Due to the
increasingly cramped office space, a move from New York was essential. To make
the move possible Headquarters had just acquired some pristine wooded acreage in
North Brunswick, NJ, at the intersection of US 1 and US 130, just south of New
Brunswick, the location of station WII with its 200 kw Alexanderson alternator
transmitter operating on 21.8 kHz. This was the station used to transmit
President Wilson's ultimatum to Germany that resulted in the ending of WW1.
Our three amateurs descended onto the property with glee, because in
addition to a long nature trail and large office complex building housing the
Headquarters' business operations, a large, magnificent museum was built to
display Boy Scouting memorabilia from all over the World. Their immediate
thought was, "What neat place to operate and display ham radio!" The main
display room was about the size of a standard basketball court. At one end of
the room an attractive console was constructed in clear maple for the long
desired amateur station.
Various manufacturers of amateur gear generously donated equipment to the
station. Hallicrafters were the first, donating an HT?-111 transceiver, and an
HT-37 RF power amplifier. The late Al Khan, K4FW, (then with Electro-Voice and
owner of Ten-Tec) donated an EV-664 microphone, and Telrex donated a tower and
its then top-of-the-line three-band beam and rotator. Later on, Hammarlund
donated their latest transceiver, and then still later, Heathkit donated an
SB-101 transceiver and an SB-200 RF power amplifier.
It was my good fortune to live in Dayton (800 miles east of the Hara
Hamvention Dayton), only eight miles south of the new Headquarters on US 130. By
sheer coincidence Hoisy, K2GDR, moved in just down the street from me, and
naturally, both being hams, we became good friends. What was even more fortunate
for me was that he invited me to join with him, Lloyd, and Harry to assemble the
station. Guess what? Among other tasks, they gave me the responsibility for the
antennas! What joy that task was. We four then formed the 'Boys' Life Radio
Club' and the original call assigned to the new station was K2BFW, which will be
featured in an interesting story later on.
The station operation was very successful. Not only did we four of the Club
enjoy operating the station, but all scouts and scouters visiting the museum,
who were also licensed amateurs, and other visitors who were licensed, were
given the opportunity to operate the station in the same manner as those who
visit W1AW at the ARRL Headquarters.
But as luck(?) would have it, the K2BFW operations seemed to go awry during
the week-ends of JOTA, the yearly October World-Wide Jamboree on the Air. This
was the time when we expected to have an exciting bit of operation with the new
station, when Boy and Girl Scouts visit nearby amateur stations to talk with
other Boy and Girl Scouts over amateur radio. And every year, we at Headquarters
had licensed scouts and scouters lined up for twenty-four hour operation of
K2BFW throughout the entire JOTA weekends.
But alas, a distressing problem arose during JOTA--every year. A
scoutmaster, a licensed amateur in Pennsylvania right across the Delaware River
from us, obtained a special event call sign for the JOTA--K3BSA! Wow, the pile
ups he drew! Everybody thought he was the Headquarters station. 'Ol K2BFW was
left in his dust, and when we announced during every contact that we were the
Headquarters station, many of our contacts disbelieved us, and told us to get
off Headquarters' frequency. However, we still made many successful contacts,
including lots of DX. We were always able to work HB9S, World Scouting
Headquarters, in Geneva, Switzerland, where some of our own Scouting executives
had the opportunity to talk with their counterparts in Geneva.
After several years of the distressing problem emanating from K3BSA I
decided we needed more recognition and visibility than we could possibly get
with the call sign K2BFW. So I decided to get us a new call sign that would give
us the clout we needed. On checking the Call Book it was obvious that both W2BSA
and K2BSA were in use. Well, it was also obvious that W2BS wasn't in use-but
better than nothing,
As a former monitoring officer with the Radio Intelligence Division of the
FCC I was personally acquainted with Rosel H. Hyde, then Chairman of the FCC. I
told him of the situation and asked his advice on how to proceed in obtaining a
permanent assignment of the call sign W2BS to the Boy Scout Headquarters
station. He suggested that I present the situation in the form of a draft
petition that he would take to the Chief of the Safety and Special Services
Bureau for his comments. (At that time, the Amateur Division fell under this
Bureau's jurisdiction.) Chairman Hyde was in complete agreement with our
request. However, the Bureau Chief rejected the petition, saying there were no
administrative rules allowing a special call sign to be assigne permanently in
cases such as ours. In addition, he stated that old timers who already had
two-letter calls would object to a Boy Scout station having a two-letter call.
This last comment in his response seemed to me to be a lame excuse.
After learning of this response Chairman Hyde suggested that I revise the
petition to include some means for overcoming the Bureau Chief's objections. He
also advised me to submit the revised petition directly to the seven FCC
Commissioners.
I then started some research. I pored over old Call Books between 1921 and
1928, and to my surprise I found more than 50 two-letter calls assigned to Boy
Scout troops all over the Country. (I also discovered the early FRC policy of
assigning two-letter call signs to universities and colleges, all with suffixes
beginning with 'y'.)
The revised petition included a report on my findings concerning the
two-letter calls assigned to Boy Scout troops in those early days. By this time
Chairman Hyde's tenure had expired, and was replaced by Chairman Dean Burch.
However, Chairman Hyde remained as my advisor, and heartily approved of the
revised petition.
As Chairman Hyde had advised earlier, this time I submitted the new
petition directly to the FCC Commissioners on April 16, 1971, One of the
arguments in the new petition for a permanent assignment of a call sign for the
Headquarters' station I thought would help our position was that in addition of
its use at Headquarters, the call could also be used by other scouting groups
for their activities in all parts of the Country, simply by obtaining permission
from the current trustee of K2BSA, and applying the appropriate /n for the
District in which the operation occurs. This aspect of the permanent call sign
would then relieve the FCC staff from the paper work required to process
special-event call signs for other official Scouting activities, such as
Jamborees. (I later took some lumps from the FCC staff on this issue, because
some Jamboree leaders later ignored that aspect of the petition and requested
special call signs WJ7WSC for World Scouting C?
However, after the usual long wait for bureaucratic action, on April 1,
1969, I received a letter directly from the Chairman of the FCC himself, Dean
Burch, saying the Commission found that they believed the call sign K2BSA would
give Boy Scout Headquarters the recognition and prestige required to let the
amateur community know who we were every time we went on the air. Petition
request granted!
It seems that during the time I was doing the research, the call sign K2BSA
had become inactive, and was therefore available. K2BSA was thus assigned to our
club station of the Boy Scouts of America Headquarters! As word got around
concerning the new call sign, our local scouts and scouters started increasing
our visibility by putting in more time on the air, and the positive responses we
received proved that our recognition as Scouting National Headquarters was also
increasing dramatically.
During the first years of operation with the call sign K2BFW, Harry Harchar
was trustee of the station, but from the time of the new call sign until
Headquarters moved to Dallas, I was the trustee, and also the National JOTA
coordinator. As JOTA coordinator I was principally a PR man, publishing the
pertinent operating information in the October issues of the various amateur
publications, including QST, Ham Radio, CQ, and 73.
However, all did not bode well for the Headquarters' move from New York to
New Jersey. It appears that Scouting organizations in the Western portion of the
Country felt that the new location should have been more centrally located
between East and West to provide a more equalized service to the West. The
situation simmered until the 1990's, when the tough decision was made to move to
Dallas. For the operation of K2BSA it was not only a tough call, but a fatal
one--but fortunately, only temporarily.
Alas, a firm, unbendable high-level Headquarters decision was made that
there would be no amateur operation and no antennas erected at the new building
in Dallas. PRB-1? Then only in an amateur's dream. What then should become of
the present equipment? It was decided to distribute it among the four of us,
Lloyd, Harry, Hoisy and myself. As an affcionado of early equipment it was my
good fortune to inherit the original Hallicrafters 111 transceiver and the HT-37
power amplifier, which I still have in my collection.
Fortunately, quite some time after the move to Dallas, a Dallas Scouter who
was also an ardent amateur, and then the SCM for the North Texas ARRL District,
the late Walter 'Dan' Dansby, Jr.,W5URI, considered it untenable that K2BSA
operation was killed simply by bureaucratic executive order. Dan then started a
search for a suitable location to house K2BSA and get it back into operation. He
initially found a place to house the station at Camp Shuman on Lake Worth near
Azle, Texas, and later moved to its permanent home at Camp Wisdom in Dallas. The
station's trustee is Ray Moyer, WD8JKV, and the station manager is Frank Krizan,
KR1ZAN. K2BSA's equipment consists of two HF operating positions, a VHF/UHF
satellite position, VHF/UHF voice and packet position and amateur TV (ATV)
operating position. The station is operated during Jamboree on the Air (JOTA)
and several other weekends of the year. Maintenance is done by Crew 73 members
and Advisors of Richardson, TX.
Since September, 2000, K2BSA has been operating, and open certain Saturdays
of each month for visiting Scout groups to tour and talk with other Hams and,
perhaps, other Scouts around town, around the country and, often, the world.
Watch the K2BSA web site for details or call the Circle Ten Council
reservations desk 214-902-6764 (beginning in July 2000) to schedule a visit.
Finally, it is comforting to know that through the operation of K2BSA,
Amateur Radio is being kept alive within the Boy Scout movement, giving its
youth an introduction to our hobby and service, and hopefully instilling a
desire for them to become a part of our great Amateur Radio Community.

Walt, W2DU

On Sun, 23 Oct 2005 11:11:58 -0400, Walter Maxwell wrote:

The Evolution of Boy Scout Headquarters Station K2BSA
Sorry All, I screwed up the dates of submission to the FCC and the receipt of
the K2BSA assignment. My basic data is in Florida, which I'll dig out and
correct after we return there on Nov 1.

Walt, W2DU

In the late 50s, Al Kahn (W8DUS president of ElectoVoice) and I ran the
amateur radio station at the Jamboree at Valley Forge. I no longer remember
the call sign used. Al went on to found TenTec and passed away within the
year. I went on to Ohio State, mentoring by W8JK, and teaching.

Al was a great person. He let me drive his Thunderbird (then a sports
car) into town to get some parts. Exciting! He also taught me some
valuable lessons.

Wish that I could remember the call sign that we used.

Thanks Walt for putting down the story that I have heard you tell
before. I am an Eagle scout and it is especially disappointing not to have
more of an amateur radio presence in Scouting.

73, Mac N8TT

--
J. Mc Laughlin; Michigan U.S.A.
Home:
"Walter Maxwell" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 23 Oct 2005 11:11:58 -0400, Walter Maxwell wrote:

The Evolution of Boy Scout Headquarters Station K2BSA
Sorry All, I screwed up the dates of submission to the FCC and the receipt
of
the K2BSA assignment. My basic data is in Florida, which I'll dig out
and
correct after we return there on Nov 1.

Walt, W2DU

I have to say that you are an interesting guy, Walter. You have a lot of
experience and I always enjoy hearing about it.

Thanks,

Rod KI7CQ

On Sun, 23 Oct 2005 21:41:07 -0700, "Rod Maupin" wrote:

I have to say that you are an interesting guy, Walter. You have a lot of
experience and I always enjoy hearing about it.

Thanks,

Rod KI7CQ


Glad you enjoy them, Rod. I've had a fun-filled life, and feel very fortunate
and privileged to have been at the right place at the right time for the
opportunities to experience events that one could only dream about. I'll send
you a coupla more via email.

Walt