This story will focus on Bill’s life as a ham, how I got to know him, and how I ended up with much of his ham gear. For a more traditional bio see his obituary here.

A ham life

William P. Churchill, Jr. earned his Novice license in early 1953 at age 16. Living in Scarborough, New York, Bill was issued call sign KN2CSO. His first rig was a two-tube transmitter he built from plans in the ARRL Handbook, along with an ARC-5 BC-453 surplus receiver. In February 1954 he passed the General code exam and his call sign changed to K2CSO. Years later Bill gave a presentation at PART where he recounted what it was like to be a ham in those days.

Bill was quite active during his first two years as a ham. He was pleased to have his first contact with UK in August 1954 and years later kept the QSL card on display.

After graduating from high school in 1955, Bill attended Cornell University, and later earned a masters in electrical engineering from Northeastern University in Boston. While a student, he operated occasionally from his home QTH in New York, mostly during summers and holidays.

In January 1961, now living full time in Massachusetts, Bill was issued new call sign K1QIO. He operated for a few months in Watertown and by December 1961 had moved to Carlisle.

For the next sixty years Bill was very active on the air. He operated on many bands and enjoyed the occasional contest. Here’s what Bill had to say about his life as a ham:

I have been a ham radio operator since I was sixteen years old. My recent activity is using both vintage equipment and some of the most modern electronics. The numerous wires strung around the yard has resulted in my meeting some interesting friends and talking around the world using Morse code, voice and other modes. My current extra class call that was issued in 1978 is AA1O.

His final QSO was on the Grey Hair Net in early December 2020. Bill Churchill AA1O became a Silent Key on January 1, 2021 just a few days before his 84th birthday.

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AA1O ham shack

I was invited by the Churchill family to inventory and help find a home for Bill’s wide variety of radio gear.

Bill was a satisfied Elecraft user. At first he ran an Elecraft K2 transceiver, and based on that success he placed an early order for the Elecraft K3. In January 2008 Bill built his K3 kit (serial number 287) and that became his main operating rig. Over the years he added many options to his K3. He also acquired an Elecraft P3 panadapter, KPA500 amp, and KAT500 antenna tuner resulting in a complete K-line station. This gear is now at home in the W1SEG shack.

For AM work Bill ran a nice selection of tube gear, including a fine Collins 75A-2 receiver, a heavily modified Heathkit DX-100B transmitter, and an Astatic D-104 microphone. This equipment was conveyed to Bill Fleig K1BF.

Finally, AA1O’s VHF/UHF gear is here at W1SEG, along with some of his test equipment. I’ve also retained Bill’s eighteen logbooks and his QSL cards.

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How I first met Bill

In 1987 I was consulting at Sun Microsystems on the 386i workstation project, codenamed Roadrunner. I was working with old friend Scott Griffith on a custom cache memory chip codenamed Kali.

I had some experience working with patent attorneys, so I assisted Sun’s outside counsel on the patent applications for our project. We were pleased with what our chip Kali could do, and hoped to get patent protection for our novel distributed cache technique.

No such luck. Our application came back from the patent office and the examiner cited some killer prior art.

I recall speaking to Sun’s attorney, in a rather annoyed tone, “Hey, the inventor on this patent lives in my town! Who is this guy William Churchill anyway?” I had moved to Carlisle just a few years earlier, yet somehow in our small town Bill and I had never crossed paths.

Some time later at a town event I finally met Bill, and we had a good laugh about how his patent prevented my patent from issuing! And just to confirm we live in a small world, I subsequently worked closely with Bill’s son Pete on several chip projects.

There’s a fascinating story behind this patent. At the time, Bill was working at Data General on the hardware design team for the Eclipse minicomputer, a very successful machine introduced in 1974.

Much of the same hardware team then went on to design the Eclipse MV/8000, codenamed Eagle, as described in Tracey Kidder’s superb book The Soul of a New Machine.

You can read more about Data General, Eclipse and Eagle here on Ron Gruner’s wonderful website.

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Thanks, Bill. You were a good friend and a fine engineer.

73
Steve
W1SEG