Gary Budiansky, WA1MCR, writes on the PART of Westford mailing list:
Clem Moritz, W1EVT, unfortunately became a Silent Key about 3 or 4 years ago. Clem lived in Acton and had an array of Rohn R25 towers on his property off of route 2, just west of the Concord Rotary. There’s about 15 of these 100-foot towers in the woods behind his old ham shack. Some are still standing, some are broken or have fallen down. I took a tour of the property over the weekend. See photos, below. Internet wisdom says that Clem used the towers to construct a very large “Sterba Curtain Array” that covered 3 to 30 MHZ, one wire antenna for each band culminating from a central feed point. See ARRL antenna book.
The Town of Acton voted tonight to begin the process of acquiring the property (33 acres) from the Moritz Family to use as conservation land. The remaining towers and antennae will be removed from the property by the family per the proposed agreement.
Did anyone personally know Clem or anything more about his station and Sterba Array?
P.S. I took a town sponsored tour of the land this past weekend. The towers are at least 40 years old and I noted rust on many of them. Some are standing and some fell down (Clem had these balanced on cinder blocks with guy wires – no sign of any concrete in the woods! They’re very heavy and in the midst of trees in the woods. It would be a major job to retrieve these if they were available). I asked the tour leader if the town would consider putting a plaque along the trail commemorating the ham radio station that was there. They’ll consider it.
Pictures below show the old ham shack and some of the tower material.
