The Watson's Radio Club ran very successfully from the late 1940s to about 1980 thanks to the efforts of two teachers - Tom Simpson GM3BCD who constructed a world-class HF station and John Hughes GM3LCP who taught Radio Amateurs Exam and the Morse test. Your scribe was a member of the club from 1959 to 1962, secretary in 1961-62 and obtained his GM3PSP licence there in 1962.

David Guest (later-GM3TFY) John Hughes GM3LCP, Mike Senior GM3PAK, George Millar GM3UM (FP),

and Tom Simpson GM3BCD.

Technical Subjects teacher Tom GM3BCD built a 150W AM Station using "a Geloso VFO driving an 813 PA modulated by a pair of 807s in Class-B zero bias". The receiver was an Eddystone 750 and the antenna was a 2-element cubical quad for 15m & 10m on the roof. Your scribe remembers Tom working VK stations (Australia) at lunchtimes during the sunspot maximum in 1959. And we heard Sputnik-1 on 20.00 MHz the day it was launched!

"If you touch this, anything can happen"!

Physics teacher John Hughes GM3LCP succeeded in getting about 40 boys licensed after teaching the Radio Amateur's Exam and 12 wpm morse test, a remarkable achievement.

A rather obviously posed photograph of radio club members which was published in a major article about the school in the Illustrated London News in 1958.

Ed Bain GM4AIS, Roger Manners GM3ZVL and Robert Dalgleish GM3ZVB equipped this van with radio gear and made a tour of the UK in 1972.