Ham radio is an activity that’s been around for over a hundred years and boasts a few million adherents around the world. It should come as no surprise that an institution so ancient and so compelling would harbor a few mysteries.

During the early development of radio the activity was particularly attractive to a certain kind of fellow, one with a keen interest in science and industry and often a fellow whose station in life was a cut or two above that of the ordinary man. The formation of clubs and societies, recondite in nature and hidden within the rank and file of this adventurous lot of explorers led to more than a few secrets.

That much you might know. What you probably don’t know is that a few of these clandestine organizations remain active inside the hobby to this very day.

I’m not personally a member of any of these groups, nor do I have first-hand knowledge of who they are or what they do on a regular basis. But from time to time I hear from some of these secret members who drop bombshells on me that strain credulity.

I don’t know why these have chosen to share the hobby’s deepest secrets with me. But for some reason, an occasional package or audio tape arrives at my shack delivered by a personal courier as happened just a few days ago. This time the package included the details of something that transpired more than 30 years ago and it included implicit instructions to share it with my readers.

Back in the late 1970’s a distinguished scientist and radio amateur whose name must not be revealed had developed a rather amazing antenna that performed well at high frequencies. Its precise construction remains a secret to this very day, but imagine if you will a six-foot long tube whose diameter was about two-inches. A coil of wire was wrapped around almost the entire outer body and inside there were active components, including a small pump as most of the tube was filled with a Noble gas compound that periodically required refilling.

To say this antenna worked well would be an incredible understatement.

Reports indicated that the antenna was highly effective without a tuner across all of the HF amateur bands. Placed horizontally or vertically in the corner of a room or the attic it was an order of magnitude more effective than any directive array installed at 150-feet.

It was THE ONE, the ultimate antenna the pioneers had waited decades to see.

This would revolutionize the world of HF communications. No longer would a select few with expensive commercial gear, clouds of aluminum, and a California Kilowatt rule the Honor Roll. Now even the QRPer with his milliwatt home-brew gear would be on equal footing with the millionaire. In essence, the new antenna would level the playing field entirely — the 99 percent would overnight become the equal of any millionaire ham with a hundred-acre antenna farm.

Plans were made to manufacture the small wonder. This scientist/inventor wanted to sell the antenna for US $1000 and he fully expected to eventually sell one million of them making him the first amateur radio manufacturer with a billion dollars of revenue.

He tried to keep these plans secret for obvious reasons so he never patented the antenna - which would have announced it to the world. His belief was that the gas compound required was so exotic that even if someone managed to reverse engineer the design, the compound would remain the only edge he needed.

The first five-thousand units were assembled in a large, vacant building somewhere in New Mexico.

Soon after this production, the inventor discovered his secret had somehow leaked when he got a call with an offer to purchase the design — which he refused — and he continued to build inventory. But the phone calls never ceased, always warning him to sell the design for the antenna or risk losing it all.

He underestimated the threat and continued undaunted.

Then one night he was visited by four members of one of these secret radio societies who explained to him that amateur radio was bigger than he and his design. And his antenna, while extremely clever, would ruin the hobby by allowing those with the most basic equipment to compete on equal footing with those who had invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in hardware and antenna farms.

Equal wasn’t good nor was it “fair” he was told.

They argued, voices were raised as it became very heated and anyone watching would have noticed just how very serious this had become. Unmoved by their threats, he stood to leave and tried to brush past them, but that’s when they grabbed him, pulled a covering over his head and tossed him into the trunk of a dark colored sedan and drove off into the desert, never to be seen again.

That inventory of over five thousand antennas was moved by truck to a landfill outside of Alamogordo, New Mexico where they were first crushed, then buried. Three feet of concrete covers that burial site and while a few of the local hams had some knowledge of this activity at the time, the years have created doubts as to its veracity leading some to conclude this was probably just folklore.

But I know better, and now so do you.

We know this because that inventor had an assistant. A fellow radio enthusiast who had been hiding in the shadows when the abduction took place and who was an eyewitness to this entire episode as it unfolded. Fear caused him to hold his tongue about it for many years. But now at 85 years of age, he figures there’s no reason to take this story to his grave so he dropped off that package with these details included.