Biography

I believe it was 1959 when I got my Novice license. I was about 12 and had been interested in electronics for a while because of finding old, thrown-away radios and TV. My neighbor buddy and I picked them up and then took them apart. After a while we had a good sized collection of parts and I thought I should figure out how to use them.

I got my license and without realizing how long it would take to do it, started working on building a transmitter. I don't remember what I had for a receiver but it was something commercial and _very_ inexpensive (remember - I was in junior high school). By the time I got all the parts and built my transmitter, there wasn't much time left of the year the Novice license was good for. I took the test and upgraded to Technician, and had a friend at school whose older brother had a station. I watched them some, and went to my local radio club meetings. Eventually I was able to borrow a radio club Heathkit Sixer and coaxial vertical antenna. I used those for a while and finally got my own Gonset Communicator II.

After High School I went to a local junior college intending to start on an electrical engineering degree. Because they registered students in alphabetical order and my last name starts with V, I was too late to get into the classes needed for starting an engineering curriculum. So I took Electronics Technology instead, and got my Associate's Degree. With some other ham friends, we reactivated the school's radio club station. That was my last ham radio activity for a lot of years.

A few years later I joined the Air Force, to avoid the Army draft, and became a long-range heavy radar repair technician. I was on active duty for nine years and got to see northern Montana plains, Alaska, the far-northern California coast, north-east North Dakota and Europe. I was assigned to an Engineering and Installation Squadron in Germany, and all work was deployed to other locations, including England, Spain and India. I can truthfully say that I have touched the wall of the Taj Mahal.

A few years after retiring, a visitor to the neighborhood, an active ham, convinced me to get some useable gear and get on the air again. I went to a licensing session to get the automatic upgrade to General and while I was there took the Extra Class test - and passed it! I was quite surprised.

So I found an IC-706MkII on Craigslist and was given an antenna. I rigged up an interface for my laptop and got started on the radio using FT8 in October, 2018. As of Feb. 25, 2019 I have 517 LoTW QSO's, with 367 QSL records. It's been a lot of fun so far, and there's so much more to learn and to do!


In winter, I'm at Grid Square EL86uw, Englewood, FLorida. There I use a Butternut HF6V-X, but with a rather poor location and poor ground/radial situation (due to the tiny size of my lot).

In summer, the station at my primary residence, Grid Square EN63va, Grand Haven, Michigan. That's where I use the GAP Challenger.

The IC-706 travels with me to both locations. So far I only use FT8.

Worked DXCCs:

Equipment

IC-706MkII Transceiver

Summers in Mich. - GAP Challenger DX antenna; GRID SQUARE EN63VA77LO

Winters in Florida - Butternut HF6V antenna; GRID SQUARE EL86uw25BB
ITU Zone 8; CQ Zone 5

MINI60S antenna analyzer; MFJ-207 Antenna Analyzer with outboard freq counter