Now You Know! Hiram Percy Maxim and the W1AW Station:

More than 1000 visitors come to see ARRL and operate W1AW each year. Each visitor has a chance to tour ARRL HQ and meet and talk with staff, and see all that the League does to promote the Amateur Radio Service. When they go over to W1AW, some guests want to know if the station was once the home of Hiram Percy Maxim, cofounder and first President of the ARRL.

In February 1936, when Maxim died of pneumonia on his way back from visiting Lick Observatory http://www.ucolick.org/ on Mt Hamilton in San Jose, California, the ARRL HQ station -- W1MK -- was located at Brainard Field http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartford-Brainard_Airport in Hartford. In March 1936, the Connecticut River flooded and the building where the station was housed was destroyed by the flood waters. The League's Board of Directors decided that a new station be built on a more suitable site in memory of Maxim. In December 1936, the FCC -- in the first action of its kind -- assigned the call W1AW to ARRL in memoriam. The ARRL purchased a 7 acre site in Newington, about 5 miles southwest of Brainard Field. From the flood until September 1938, W1MK operated from ARRL Headquarters, then on LaSalle Road in West Hartford. On September 2, 1938 -- what would have been Maxim's 69th birthday -- W1AW, the Hiram Percy Maxim Memorial Station, was dedicated, with the ceremony broadcast across the country by CBS Radio. So, no, the building where W1AW is located was never home to Hiram Percy Maxim; in fact, he never saw it. But even so, we know that his spirit lives on every time we sit down at a radio. Now you know!

Source:

The ARRL Letter

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