W9YB – Purdue University Amateur Radio Club
Today I met with the gang from W9YB to become an official member of the Purdue Amateur Radio Club – W9YB.
All the members are students, except for ‘ol N9SJA here. I was explaining to them that is has been almost 20 years or so since I have been a student at Purdue. I am the old guy in the club with the most experience hamming it up, but I found that I can learn a lot from them as they are EET students, and we even have a new member from China. Sheng came from China and had an interest in radio. He used to enjoy monitoring shortwave and HF traffic, but could not obtain his license in China. So, I’m going to help him with that. We should be able to get him an American FCC license here so that he can operate. Of course he can always use the gear at the club to operate when there is a licensed control operator present.
So far I am helping by donating some funds, and offering to do small projects. I think it will be fun to go over and hang out from time to time.
They have some nice antennas, however they have fallen into disrepair over the years. The main issue is that students are not allowed on the roof anymore of the Purdue Memorial Union, so they will have to hire someone that is bonded and qualified to work on the antennas to get them back up to snuff. I would also like to see them put up a good G5RV style of dipole just to get something good up in the air for general operation.
They have a collection of some nice radio gear. A Ten-Tec Omni V, Yaesu FT-920, and a member’s Yaesu FT-957 and some mixed other gear that ranges from 2m/70cm hand helds to some boat anchor type gear that has been with the club for quite a long time.
Here is a few pics of their boat anchor gear (we call this the museum gear 😉 :
And they have a TON of QSL cards that have been collected over 70+ years! Some they display on the wall, others they have drawers full of:
It was very nice meeting some of the members today and getting to tour the shack. I think next time I am up I will operate for a little while perhaps.
I am sure that I will have a lot more postings and will have a blast as a new member of W9YB!
73! de Nick N9SJA
K9XN 
Definitely need to get over there and sign up, too. 15 years now since I graduated.
Nick, thanks for your blog and the great photos here. I was a W9YB member from roughly 1967 through the 70’s. I setup the first RTTY station there at the club. And did a bunch of computer networking development at the Engineering Computer Network and Purdue Computing Center. I actually used that Hammerlund you show in the first photo(!) We had some decent Collins gear for the RTTY station. The antenna patch panel I think also was created about that same time frame. –William Croft, KD6RG.
https://engineering.purdue.edu/ECN/AboutUs/History/Employees ECN network
http://lightfield.com/nf.htm (current work with neuron / glial networks.)
William,
Thanks for the kind words. I am also the webmaster for the club now, so please check out our club page at http://www.w9yb.org for more pictures and information about our various activities! Always good to hear from a former ‘Yogi Bear’ member, we still have several other members from that era floating about and we hear from them from time to time.
73! de Nick N9SJA