Last updated: ...02.16.2023 18:18

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The Middle Tennessee Amateur Radio Society is
composed of Hams in Middle Tennessee who are dedicated to promoting amateur radio.

 Providing public service communications and having fun doing so.

 Anyone interested in Amateur radio is welcome to join us.

History of past Officer's of Middle Tennessee Amateur Radio Society (RED) years missing Data!

Reminiscences of MTARS

From the Beginning

by

Bruce Nebergall, K4TQL

As I recall, the Middle Tennessee Amateur Radio Society got its start in 1967.  At the initial meeting, there were nine of us in attendance. 

Those in attendance that I can remember (after all it has been 40 years) are myself K4TQL, Lee Cory K4DCT???, Heard Lowery K4VFA, Bill Earheart K4EGC, Ira Jenkins, Bob Carr W4IYU and three others.  For the life of me, I cannot remember the others although one of them might have been Loral (Woody) Woodham and another Neal Fry.  Unfortunately, I lost all my log books three years ago when our house burned.  I was in the process of writing this history when that happened.  A lot of history went up in those flames.   As I said, there were nine of us at that initial meeting.  We met in the VFW building at the end of Spring Street in Manchester.  As I recall, the weather was chilly and damp so it must have been sometime in the spring when that first meeting was held.

 We got together because we wanted an organized group to provide emergency communication services to the community and to foster fellowship with the hams in the area.  At that time, there was no organized ham club in the area but there were a lot of hams, most of whom seemed to work for AEDC.  There was, after all, a lot of technical activity going on out there and that attracts a lot of hams. 

As I said, we met at the VFW building in Manchester.  The building no longer exists.  The meeting sticks in my mind because we met in the dark by the light of flashlights and street lights.  We could get in, but for some reason we couldn't get the lights on.  Either there was no power to the building that night or we couldn't find the master switch.  I'm not sure who got the permission to meet there that evening (it might have been me).  We decided to meet anyway because at least we were all together.

 That first meeting was intended to see if we could get a club started.  At that time, there was no ham club in the area and there were a lot of hams most of whom seem to have worked at AEDC.  We agreed to come up with a constitution and bylaws and meet the next month.  We did come up with a constitution and bylaws.  I do not remember who might have been in the group to come up with them.  Since there were so few at the time, we may have been a committee of the whole.  We agreed upon a name: the high sounding title of Middle Tennessee Amateur Radio Society.  It seems to have worn well over the years.  We did elect a slate of officers at that second meeting.  I honestly do not remember the entire slate of officers.  I do know that I was elected President, probably because I had tried to get the group together in the first place.  That being said, MTARS would not have been formed without the willingness of all the others.  I have no recognizance of the other officers nor do I know what happened to the records of those meetings.  By the way, we had lights and heat at that and subsequent meetings.

 We met several times more at the VFW building.  Word was getting around about the club and more members joined.  We decided to move the meetings to a larger and more accessible facility.  I seem to remember that we met in a church in the central part of Tullahoma.  George Stone reminds me that we met at the Presbyterian Church.  I do remember conducting meetings in a hall with a large wooden podium.  The group was beginning to get quite large by then.

I do not know how many times I was re-elected.  Once at least.  I may have been the direct predecessor to Mike Jaquish.  I do know that by mid-1970 I would have had to relinquish the office because I was finally caught in the layoffs at AEDC.  I moved from Manchester in August 1970 to Cartersville, Georgia where I went to work for Union Carbide making Glad bags for the next 27 years.  I retired from UC (then becoming First Brands Corporation) in 1997, a move that I have never regretted.

 I have a lot of memories from those years.  I can remember Bill Earheart spearheading, with others, VHF communications in the area.  Someone (I believe it was Bill) setting up a repeater in the area.  My first VHF rig was a Motorola 5V transceiver that was mounted in the trunk of my 1965 Dodge Dart.  It was a real bear of a right and had about 20 watts output.  I believe I bought it from Bill.  Most of the communications was on .94 simplex.  I multi-frequencied the rig setting it up to use the .34/.94 repeater frequency by using a switch.  I do remember that I had to use a big dropping resistor to supply the rig because it ran on 6V and the car, of course, had a 12 volt system. 

Bill Earheart and Bob Carr put me in touch with Bill S?????, a ham who ran a commercial radio business.  Some GE TPL rigs came on the market used and I bought one from Bill S (someone help me out with his name).  He didn't convert it but he did show me how to do it and then tuned it up using his equipment.  I do remember that it was quite a hit on the  pocket book to buy that rig; it took all of $100 which was a bunch of dough in 1967-68.  I still have the rig and, as far as I know, it still works. 

I remember Mike Jaquish, Bill Earheart and Bob Carr running messages on teletype out of Mississippi during Hurricane Camille in 1969.  I'm pretty sure that it was done on Air Force MARS which most of us were part of at the time (I joined AF MARS in 1967).  I do know that all I was good for at the time was to furnish moral support and run for coffee because I didn't know much about teletype at that time. 

I can remember MTARS furnishing communications for the Tullahoma Christmas parade in either 1967, 1968 or 1969.  I couldn't really participate as I didn't have a walkie-talkie.  I did follow the parade and help where I could.  I'm not sure that I even had my TPL running at the time so that I could work mobile. I do know that it was cold as all get out.  I especially remember the Field Day activities that MTARS held on the mountain at Monteagle.  At first, we used Bob Carr's call, W4IYU.  I got a real charge out of operating 40 meter SSB in the early morning hours.  It was always fun to see if we could Work All States on that band; it really opened up at 3 AM.  We did it, too.  Wonder whatever happened to those logs.  I don't know that we ever really placed in the event but we did have a lot of fun. 

One funny incident happened one year:  Of course we always used funky phonetics during the contest so that we would stand out.  Bob's call lended itself to using Whiskey Four Ida's Yellow Underwear as phonetics.  Don't you think that we got a real laugh out of receiving a return call from K4PCB:  Kilo Four Pop Corn Balls.  Not exactly repeatable in polite society, especially back then, but certainly funny. 

It was sometime in 1969 or 1970 that one of our members passed away.  Again, I cannot remember his name but he was well liked in the club.  The club voted to apply for and it received his callsign in memoriam:  W4UOT.  That call has served well over the years. 

The first time I actually think that I used it was when I made a return trip from Georgia in 1971 to participate with the club again at Monteagle.  I remember it well because it rained like crazy that weekend and my family and I stayed in a tent which leaked like a sieve.  The ground was wet, we were wet and all our sleeping gear was wet.  Talk about miserable!  It wasn't very long before we invested in a popup camper which we still have but have not used much in recent years.  Unfortunately, we have not been back to participate in another Field Day.  Maybe next year.  But, I am darn sure not as young as I used to be and won't even begin to stay up all night like I used to.  I do remember staying up all night one Field Day and going back to crash on my girl friends couch the rest of Sunday and Sunday night.  That was before I got married in 1969 so it must have been in 1968 when that happened. 

Pardon my rambling but it is hard to piece things together after 40 years especially with all my records gone.  I have fond memories about MTARS and the folks who were involved with it like Mike Jaquish, Heard Lowery, Lee Cory, Ira Jenkins, Bob Hoehl, Marshall Kingery, Bill Earheart, Bob Carr, Woody Woodham, Walt Williams and many more that I can't name any longer.  I hope that these reminiscences jog the memories of those who can remember better than me and fill in the gaps.  One of these days I hope to get up to a meeting before all the old guys are gone; so many have left us already. 

                                                                                                            73's 

                                                                                                            Bruce Nebergall, K4TQL

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Mike Jaquish remembers...

Hi Cathy. Good to hear from you, and I admire the idea of doing a club
history. MTARS is a super club, and I'm glad to help all I can with the
history.

It looks like you have a pretty good grip on the officers back to 1972. I
did find a note from Marshall Kingery saying that I had been elected
President of MTARS in December 1970, so apparently I was President for CY
1971. Unfortunately, the note from Marshall did not mention the other
officers; it was a nomination letter to get the Tn Council of Amateur Radio
Clubs to consider me as the outstanding ham of the year 1970. I was the
recipient of the Dr. Noble Guthrie award in 1970, which was the Memphis
club's way of telling me they appreciated what I had done for the state. I
was pretty active then, being the Section Emergency Coordinator for the
ARRL in late 60s and the local EC.

In 1981, MTARS gave me a very nice award for my years of leading our
emergency and public service efforts. We were into lots of stuff from our
humble beginnings with W4UOT, K4EGC, and W4IYU in the mid 60s. We provided
communications for Christmas parades, the Great Tennessee Rally for the
SCCA, foot race in Manchester, as well as helping with several real
disasters, like Hurricane Camille (when we set up a major communications
clearinghouse for traffic with Louisiana), a train wreck in Normandy,
winter storms, tornados, Boy Scout adventures, liaison with CAP, telethons,
etc.

We also were VERY active in the annual Simulated Emergency Test. So much so
that we moved Tennessee from 17th to 5th in the nation while I was the SEC.
What a group!

We did a lot for our county and cities in terms of public service, and any
credit I may have received was simply as the leader of the dynamic group of
hams in our neck of the woods. These guys are my lifelong friends, and I
need to come to a meeting sometime and renew acquaintances with them. I
left in 1985 or 86 and just bump into a few as I travel through now.

Talk with Bill Earheart, K4EGC(SK) about the early years, too. He was in the
first meeting at city hall, and I moved there in 1964 so it was after that
when we started the club that later became MTARS. I'm sorry that I don't
have a whole lot of info about the officers, but the secretary should have a
good shot at that.

I wish you the best of luck with this project Cathy. Let me know if I can
help you any more.

73,
Mike, W4WJH

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Send U.S. Post Office mail to:
MTARS, P.O. Box 932, Tullahoma, TN 37388