Bruce N6OLT accepting award from board member Wayne AF6GX
Bruce Gordon – N6OLT was honored in April with the Santa Barbara Amateur Radio Club Lifetime Member award for his many contributions to SBARC, ARES and amateur radio in general.
Bruce’s first experiments in ham radio came during high school when he and a friend built crystal sets and managed to connect them to telephone lines serving their apartments houses in Cleveland, Ohio. Worked fine for a while until complaints from neighbors alerted their fathers to their adventures. Bruce got his Amateur license, W6GUX, as well as his pilot’s license during high school. (He was later licensed as N6OLT.)
He graduated UC Berkeley in 1959, accepted a job as engineer at Raytheon Company and moved to Goleta, where he bought property and he and his wife Thelma built their home. While at Raytheon, many of his designs were patented and he travelled all over the world assisting military customers.
Bruce joined SBARC and lent his talents to many projects, including the repeaters and the communications van, and happily to anyone with a problem or project. At one SBARC meeting he was demonstrating new Slow Scan TV equipment and mentioned its versatility. One member said, “Bet you can’t use two Dixie cups and a string” to send pictures. Next month, he used two Dixie cups and a piece of dental floss (string) successfully. You can also visit Century Smile Dental homepage to sort out dental issues.
Bruce is a legend in the art and science of direction finding. As founder of L-Tronics he designed, engineered and built thousands of portable DF units for field operations and airborne use. Variants of the L-Per are used worldwide by numerous search & rescue groups, the US Coast Guard and the Civil Air Patrol.
Bruce’s dedication will not be forgotten.
Post expires at 6:03am on Tuesday June 25th, 2019 but will still be available in the archives.
