Electromagnetics, the W8JK Antenna, and the 'Wow!' Signal (2024)

Antenna enthusiasts will recognize the call sign W8JK as the inventor of the classic array known as the W8JK flat-top beam. The antenna has unique characteristics that make it popular today and the interested ham can search the internet to find an almost overwhelming number of references for this design.

If you're truly an old timer, you would know it as the `8JK flat-top beam antenna, originally described in the March and June (1937) issues of Radio Magazine and further discussed by Kraus in his QST article in the June, 1982 issue.

After spending 6 years in the Submarine Service of the US Navy I returned to school in pursuit of my Electrical Engineering degree at The Ohio State University. I had been an amateur radio operator as a 13-year-old teenager in 1963 and now it was the mid-1970's and I was finally achieving my goal of obtaining my BSEE.

The first years went by at Ohio State and I began taking the core EE courses which included two semesters of Electromagnetics - starting with static charges, progressing through Maxwell's Equations and on to antenna theory.

I was privileged to have as my instructor Dr John Kraus, W8JK, a distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering and Director of the OSU Radio Observatory known as "Big Ear". Dr Kraus had authored several text books on Electromagnetics and Antennas and his books were translated (sometimes illegally, as was done in the Soviet Union) in languages for use all over the world.

I had Dr Kraus for Electromagnetics for both courses and found him to be a very personable, if world-renowned expert in the subject matter.

His exams were always the most thoughtful and insightful of all the EE courses I took at Ohio State - he tested to see if you understood the core concepts he taught - each was an open book exam and if you did not understand the principles of the subject you stood little chance of doing well.

Now I had heard of the `8JK beam antenna some years earlier and one day in the second semester of Electromagnetics it finally dawned on me that, indeed, my professor must be the very same W8JK who invented the antenna.

So, I came up to Dr Kraus after one lecture on antennas and told him I was a ham and asked if he was the real W8JK - and the inventor of the array.

He was delighted I recognized his work - he had not made it known to our class that he was a ham - and said, yes, he was one and the same.

With that encouragement I went back to our little one room apartment in married student housing and began to really study his textbook analysis of the W8JK array.

I was rewarded for my effort when I discovered on the Final Exam for the course that Spring, that for one of the questions Dr Kraus had us analyze his W8JK antenna design!

A nice relationship was developed during that Junior year of school with Dr Kraus and when I discovered that he was the Director of the Ohio State Radio Observatory I went up to the top floor of the Caldwell Lab Engineering Building and spoke with Bob Dixon, W8ERD, the Assistant Director, about the possibility of becoming involved with the Observatory.

A very good friend of mine and fellow EE student, Mike Mraz, N6MZ (of DXpedition fame) was also interested in working in some capacity at the Radio Observatory so we both were encouraged to speak to Dr Kraus and he created a work-study project for us in our Senior year of school, working at the Radio Observatory just north of Columbus in Delaware, Ohio.

Mike took the lead with my assistance and we designed and developed a 50-channel active filter for the receiver for use in the sky scan of the heavenly sphere that was underway at the Radio Observatory.

Our filter was put into service in Spring of 1977 and was part of the receiver system that copied the famous "Wow! Signal" which has baffled the scientific community for decades. It was a narrow-band emission from a certain region of space that may have been from an intelligent source.

Whether that is true or not has been the subject of intense debate since August of 1977 when it was received. All one has to do is search the internet for the "Wow! Signal" and you can find articles, videos, analyses and debate which have raged nonstop for over 40 years. There have even been T-shirts made with the famous 6EQUJ5 signal strength report in the original computer printout for the Wow! signal...

During our Senior year of school, Dr Kraus invited Mike and I and our significant others to his home for dinner and a discussion of his research. He was a gracious host along with his lovely wife Alice and we thoroughly enjoyed the evening.

As members of the Electrical Engineering Honorary, Eta Kappa Nu, Dr Kraus hosted a picnic for us at his estate north of Columbus.

The small pond on his property was full of largemouth bass and I wangled permission from Dr Kraus to come out and fish for them when I had spare time.

On one of my visits to his home he showed me his radio shack and introduced me to his technique for determining if an HF band was open to a certain part of the world.

He would point his W8JK beam in the desired direction and send a single `dit' and pause to listen - if he heard a delayed dit come back he knew the band was open for that frequency and azimuth since the `8JK beam has a bi-directional radiation pattern.

As a result of that visit and conversation I received my only QSL card from W8JK and for the frequency of the contact he paused, looked up at the ceiling and said, "Well, this was a person-to-person QSO so I guess the frequency must be in the visible light spectrum!" and he wrote 680nm for the wavelength of our QSO.

As the years passed I was able to occasionally keep up with Dr Kraus by letter and made one final visit to see him after his retirement.

He was as busy and productive in his retirement years as he was when he taught and did research at Ohio State.

I recall seeing him leaving the campus one day after the last class in the afternoon and he looked at me and said, "Now the second day begins!".

73 and RIP, Dr Kraus.