Who Am I

Who Am I

Now that I'm going to be on the ballot I really need to make a presentation of who I am and what I can bring to the ARRL board as a Vice Director.

History

After following my father wb0eqt to ham meetings and swapmeets for most of my childhood I finally got my own ticket in 1981 between my first and second years of college. My callsign was n0czk. I enjoyed many days operating the school club station at Iowa State University, wa0khf located in my dormitory, Friley Hall. In 1982 I moved out of the dormitory and into other university housing. My roommate was also a ham and we ran a whole station out of our housing unit. I was in Army MARS for a couple of years. At one time I had a complete WWII era teletype setup in our living room running RTTY the old fashioned way.

Soon I found the girl of my dreams and we got married. I graduated from college with a degree in computer science. We moved to an apartment block in Chicago then to a townhouse in the suburbs. My only station was the 2 meter FM radio in my little pickup truck, a Drake TR-22 with a small amplifier from Tokyo High Power. But that stuff got stolen and I was off the air! Kids came along, job changes too. We moved back to Iowa and I put another VHF FM radio in a different car. It got stolen too! Eventually we decided to move to Colorado. My kids were growing and my job kept me busy. I changed my address with good old form 610 and I checked the box for a new callsign and was assigned kc0atc.

The thing that renewed my radio activity was the Y2K computer bug. Somehow I got myself into a meeting of the ham club in town and there was a guy there (Randy, w0avv) talking about contingency plans in case the infrastructure failed due to the Y2K problem. I decided I'd better get prepared. I went down to HRO in Denver and bought myself an ICOM IC-2100H 2 meter FM radio and an antenna. I installed that rig in the car I used to commute to work. I got on the air and started talking regularly to folks in the Fort Collins/Greeley area using the NCARC repeaters. I was having a lot of fun and my hour long commute was much more enjoyable. I joined ARES and lent a hand with some local events and nets.

Pretty soon I decided to try to get back on HF. I purchased a Howes qrp transceiver from another ham. It was CW only, 40 meters and about 3 watts of output. I put up a dipole and started making contacts. What a blast!

You know how it is with radios. When you get one then suddenly you have three. How does that happen? Well I filled up the little desk I was using in the living room and moved my ham shack to the basement/garage area. I started tearing apart old TV's, gathering all sorts of parts, building myself a real "Junque Boxx".

The story goes on for quite awhile. Let's just say that I enjoyed restoring some Big Iron AM equipment, building various kits, breaking, fixing, and having a grand time. I upgraded to Extra class. I got a vanity callsign w0ep named for the town where I lived, Estes Park, Colorado. I had a weather station. I ran an APRS digipeater and IGate. I started a CW practice net on one of the NCARC repeaters and ran that for a couple of years. I visited various nets and did more ARES volunteering. I did some casual contesting and dxing.

Earlier this year it became necessary to move from Estes Park down to Fort Collins. All of the antennas came down. The radios went into storage. My first order of business is to build a little radio shack in the backyard so I can get back on HF. I hope to have it completed before the end of the year. For a little while my station is once again the VHF/UHF mobile rig and the handheld.