I'm in the area and a ham, though not part of the club. I suggest you also get in touch with the Case club, W8EDU. Feel free to shoot me an email as well and I might be able to help me some contacts (pun intended). Email in profile for the next few hours.

this is very random, but in the 1940s-1980s my grandfather was active in that region/community. I have his call number (from a QSL I found on eBay) and have tried all the obvious searches to learn more, but am wondering if you have any recommendations for learning more about the history of ham in that area

Really cool you found his QSL card on ebay! Unfortunately I don't have many ideas. Do you know if he was affiliated with a college club at some point? I did some ham-genealogy work several years ago for my old college club by searching the school's library and found a surprising amount of information. You might also search the county library system for his name or callsign. They've done a great job of digitizing and making searchable all the old microfiche etc.

The Case club's web site hasn't been updated since August 2025. They may not be very active.

That’s really pretty recent for a ham club!

I know a guy in the area who's on ham and into radio, I'll drop him a link to your post and see what he knows.

How does a post like this get onto the 1st page of HN?

+15 in < 1 hour is a pretty decent start. HN doesn't just try to display the most voted thing of the day.

Hams are like druids wandering in an Elven forest around these parts.

They are somewhat rare, have some cultural overlap, and definitely get free upvotes.

[delayed]

This type of serendipity is one of the things HN does best. Generally someone here will know an answer or be from the area.

Plus, hams have a lot of geek history, so anything that’s about ham radio is probably going to get votes. I’m sure the time of day doesn’t hurt either. This is hitting at a good time of day for a US based post like this.

It's the hacker spirit I guess. I was excited to see it.

Because if you read this and didn’t upvote then wtf.

Once upon a time radio might have seemed like a perfectly reasonable topic for "Hacker" news...

Because I'd rather upvote this a thousand times than see another "I vibe coded HackerF, a repository of HackerNews posts that start with the letter F"

Because hams are very much a part of hacker culture, they were using the same mentality and skillset of the hacker long before people had ready access to computers. If ham content isn't HN worthy then basically nothing else is.

I clicked on this so wanting it to be about lunch meat.

Still, dear poster, I hope you find what you’re looking for.

Oh come on. I like homonyms as much as the next guy, but you know this wasn’t about lunch meat. Stop it.

[delayed]

I am shocked at the reception, and I've contacted someone through this post. We've exchanged info and I'm happy to report that while nothing is guaranteed, the best chance at avoiding the landfill has been achieved!

Best of luck! I'm glad you posted. Thanks for not letting it go to waste!

This is great news! Not to piggyback too much... but as a reminder to anyone reading this, if you're looking to offload paper/ephemera (not gear, sadly) we'd love to take them and scan them into the Digital Library of Amateur Radio Communications: https://blog.archive.org/2022/11/16/digital-library-of-amate...

I periodically (ha!) see these sorts of lots appear on Craigslist/Facebook marketplace. Is this the type of thing I can drop you a note pointing to the listing and you could reach out to the seller?