10-10 International - History

Seldom does the story of an organization's founding outlive the memory of those who founded it. The members who come after search diligently among the mitten and potsherds of notes and fragmentary minutes for their beginnings, often in vain.

So is it rapidly becoming with the 10-10 International Net. To those who could have recorded it, the work of founding and organizing was only their day to day activities- the thoughts and impulses of which motivated their acts were normal, familiar processes which needed no recording.

So we grope for much of the story of our beginning. This much is certain: that when the list of founders was set up the name of Irv Hunter, K6PWO, of Glendora, CA stands pre-eminent. The 10-10 International Net is the projection of his thoughts; the 10-10 spirit is the reflection of his enthusiasm; the growth of 10-10 is the fruition of his labors.

Around this man with his idea, there gathered a group who saw hope for ten meter activity with this innovation....and so it was born, but the nursing period was still ahead. To put a date on our history, we must go back to a spring day in March of 1962.

Ten meters had been roaring during the fifties. Then came the sixties and with it a bad case of the doldrums. Lack of good propagation, and the resulting lack of interest, caused many amateurs to abandon ten meters for greener pastures. This mass exodus from the band was cause for concern on the part of a lot of ten meter enthusiasts, for fear that this lack of activity might cause the FCC to consider reassigning this portion of the radio frequency spectrum to some other service. Sometime in 1961, Irv Hunter, K6PWO, started talking about forming an amateur radio organization to promote activity and every day use of the ten meter band. In March of 1962 word got around that a meeting would take place at the San Dimas Canyon Park, near Irv's home in Glendora, for the purpose of forming such an organization. A picnic lunch was held on a Saturday and several hams from that local area attended....and thus the seed was planted.

It was decided by this small group of stalwarts that the net would meet every day of the week except Sunday at "10:00 am local time...or 1800 UTC. (Aha, 'see you on Ten at Ten'....a natural')". So the name quickly became "10-10 Net". The frequency of 28.800 MHz was chosen as the primary daytime net frequency.

Certificates were ordered for members and the caption read Ten-Ten Net of Southern California. Although "10-10" appears on the latest corporation papers, no one seems to know just where the often used "10- X" originated. The original certificate included crossed flags at the top, USA and California, and with the exception of the crossed flags, caption and later the world map, the certificate has remained essentially the same for all these years.

As with most organizations, we experienced our share of growing pains. Originally the 10-10 Net was organized for the purpose of activating ten meters. The By-laws and preamble stated that we were a "traffic net". The 10-10 net was far from satisfying the ARRL standards for a traffic net, so a major decision was made by the officers and members. We became more of a social net with the prime purpose of maintaining activity on the 10 meter band.

Each sun spot cycle brought both high level activity and low level activity depending upon the period of each cycle. During the good part of each cycle, 10-10 continued to grow and soon became International. "Southern California~ was dropped from the name and the official name became The 10-10 International Net, Inc. and was incorporated in the State of California.

.....from information provided by Jim Michaels (SK), W6PGM #10